State Justice Statistics Program of Statistical Analysis Centers, 2021 NIBRS Data Analysis

The Virginia SAC (VASAC), the Criminal Justice Research Center, provides research and data to the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). The DCJS houses the SAC as well as serves as the SAA. The VASAC will use FY21 SJS funds for three sub-projects to assess the quality and completeness of NIBRS reporting, produce NIBRS data reports, and improve the timeliness of published NIBRS reports. Project 1) Examine Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality Statewide in Victim and Arrestee Demographics to Identify Localities with High Rates of Disproportionality. The VASAC will develop a process to generate indicators of minority over-representation or demographic disproportionality in the criminal justice system. The over-representation will be defined as percentages of minorities in local criminal justice populations as compared to percentages of minorities in the overall population of the locality. The project will cover all 134 of Virginia’s cities and counties and indicators of minority over-representation include localities that have the highest number and rates of crime victimization and criminal arrests relative to population, by race/ethnicity; focusing on identifying violent crimes, firearms, sexual assault, domestic violence, property crimes, and drug offenses. Project 2) Examine Characteristics of Historical Increase in Virginia Homicides in 2020. In 2020, VA had its largest number of reported homicides in more than 25 years. The study will focus on homicides in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 to determine which homicides committed in 2020 are different from those in the other years. Homicide comparisons include patterns across all urban, rural, suburban areas; month/day/week; time of day; specific locations; adult v juveniles; alcohol/drug use; hate crimes; and domestic violence. Project 3) Access and Analyze Law Enforcement Traffic and Pedestrian Stop Data Maintained by VSP. VSP currently does not have the capacity to analyze data to identify possible indicators of racially biased practices involving stops. The VASAC will work with VSP to establish a method for obtaining data from the Community Policing Reporting Database, quality-checking data, and conducting analyses of the reported information. Data maintained in the database for the study includes race, ethnicity, age, gender; reason for the stop; location of the stop; any warning or summons issued; and whether the person or vehicle was searched.