State of Georgia 2020 State Justice Statistics Projects - Assessing the Overlap between County Jail and Mental Health Service Populations and NIBRS Utility Demonstration

The GA SAC proposes a two-year continuation plan to complete efforts initiated in FY 2020. There are several studies and efforts proposed for the two-year continuation initiative, with the efforts focusing on NIBRS data analytics, and utility for criminal justice policy research and practice. After completing a thorough data quality assessment with year 1 of the current award, the GA SAC proposes to demonstrate the uses of NIBRS to law enforcement agencies, so they can use their data for tactical decision-making and planning. A question of interest that the GA SAC will analyze is the degree to which NIBRS data can be used as an early warning system about potential impacts on the criminal justice system during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the interest of Georgia’s governor, an analysis on gang-related crimes and their indicators will also be conducted to gain a better understanding of gangs. GA SAC also proposes to assess the implementation of a new hate crimes reporting module for both completeness and accuracy. The two continuation plan the GA SAC proposes builds upon it’s current capabilities, while also aligning with the interests of BJS and the State of Georgia. As a second project, under the Special Emphasis Category, the GA SAC proposes to leverage the nine-county jail dataset created with the SJS 2017 grant to understand the overlap between populations in county jail with potential mental illness, and those receiving services for mental health service providers. Such an analysis will allow the state of Georgia to more accurately estimate the percentage of people with mental illness in county jails. Additionally, the GA SAC will assess the impact that "familiar faces" (those booked into jail repeatedly or cycling through the crisis services in the mental health system repeatedly) have on both the criminal justice and mental health systems. To accomplish these goals, the GA SAC will merge the nine-county jail dataset to claims data for providers funded through the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.