Maintaining Continuity in the Monitoring of Offenders

The State Justice Statistics (SJS) Program is designed to maintain and enhance each state's capacity to address criminal justice issues through collection and analysis of data. The SJS Program provides support to each state to coordinate and conduct statistical activities within the state, conduct research to estimate impacts of legislative and policy changes, and serve as a liaison in assisting BJS to gather data from respondent agencies within their states.

The Mississippi Statistical Analysis Center (MS-SAC) proposes to conduct a project under the following theme: Criminal justice system crisis planning - maintaining continuity in monitoring or tracking registered sex offenders. The MS-SAC is proposing to conduct an examination of the state's current system for tracking parolees, probationers, and sex offenders to better and more fully understand the monitoring of offender "movement" on an everyday basis and during unexpected instances. From several state agencies, the SAC will collect a sample of offenders under various forms and levels of monitoring to validate that those under supervision are living and working where they are supposed to and ensure that there are no critical gaps or lapses in the monitoring process. Additionally, the MS-SAC staff will attend the Sheriff and Police Chief's conferences and visit the state headquarter offices of the Department of Corrections and Department of Public Safety to communicate with the individuals tasked with monitoring offender traffic. Project findings and information gathered from the meetings and conferences will be written in several reports and produced in a handbook to be disseminated to agencies and policymakers for communication purposes and to make recommendations for policy changes related to monitoring and tracking sex offenders.

CA/NCF