FY 2022 Virginia SJS Program

The Virginia SAC will use FY22 SJS funds for one Core Capacity project (NIBRS data analysis) and one Special Emphasis project (Victim Injury Data Analysis). The NIBRS data analysis project addresses the priority area of carrying out research using incident-based crime data that are compatible with NIBRS. Specifically, the VASAC will receive NIBRS violent crime data from the Virginia State Police to analyze and report the recent increase in crime rates from 2020 to 2021. The SAC will develop programming and analytic strategies to extract more detailed locality-specific data on violent crime incidents, offenders and victims, with an emphasis on firearms crimes. Virginia law enforcement agencies report that the ages of homicide offenders and victims are increasing, that homicides involving intimate/family victim-offender relationships are increasing, and that firearms use in these incidents is increasing. The research will focus on information that includes, data on changes in violent crime counts and rates; data on the demographics of violent crime offenders and victims; data on relationships between offenders and victims of violent crime; and data on weapons used in violent crimes. The Victim Injury Data Analysis project addresses the priority area of using administrative or operational criminal justice data from research.  The VASAC will develop the capacity to obtain and analyze victim injury data from the VA’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME). The ability to obtain and analyze this data will allow the VASAC to provide data on homicide that is unavailable in NIBRS data and which is an important topic that needs to be addressed in Virginia. The VASAC will obtain information from OCME to allow them to distinguish between the number and characteristics of violent crimes in which a firearm was noted as involved in the incident, and violent crimes in which the victim was shot in the incident.