Arizona FY 2013 State Justice Statistics Program

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 Arizona Statistical Analysis Center (SAC), located within the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC), will use SJS funds to complete two projects. First, the SAC will use funds to enhance the ACJC website by developing the infrastructure needed to support data and theory driven practice and policy and to inform promising practices, critical program elements, and evidence-based programs and policies. The SAC will obtain, and share on the website, local (i.e., state and sub-state) data and research resources that directly support the implementation of data-driven and evidence-based practices and policies in Arizona. The framework of the EBP infrastructure will include a set of resources that are organized around four core components: 1) data and theory driven practice and policy; 2) promising practices; 3) critical elements of effective programs; and 4) evidence-based programs and policies. The EBP section of the website will include data and research information that is organized by the above framework. Second, funds will support a portion of the SAC Director's time to support the state's efforts to implement recommendations made in its National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Records Improvement Plan to address the gaps in information available to the NICS related to mental health adjudications and commitments and other prohibiting factors. Specifically, the SAC Director will assist with the following efforts: manage and participate in additional research activities connected to the recommendations; analyze criminal history record data to inform targeted technical assistance efforts; analyze information from data sources in other NICS categories to inform targeted technical assistance; and utilize criminal history record information to measure the performance of Arizona's NICS Task Force.

CA/NCF