State Justice Statistics Program for Statistical Analysis Centers, 2014

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 Maryland Statistical Analysis Center (SAC), located within the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP), is aligned programmatically with the state's public safety priorities. The SAC plays a vital role in the development of effective policies and practices in the criminal justice field. Additionally, the SAC objectively supports the collection and analysis of statewide criminal justice statistics and evidence-based policies and practices. GOCCP has developed SAC into a one-stop shop of timely, relevant data for public safety entities. The SAC will use SJS funds to complete tasks associated with the following main projects: 1) work with GOCCP to enhance the performance measures of various grant programs including Byrne/JAG, the Gun Violence Reduction Grant, and Maryland Safe Streets to track the progress of current grantees and provide more of a research base in which GOCCP can guide its decision-making in funding various grant programs; 2) enhance the SAC website's crime statistics page to include an interactive crime map/dropdown menu as well as a variety of new crime datasets and spreadsheets; 3) evaluate the public safety impact MD SB 422 that increases the number of crimes in which law enforcement can issue a criminal citation as oppposed to executing an arrest; 4) conduct trainings for various criminal justice personnel on the Domestic Relating Crimes Auditing process and ensure that the indicator to flag domestic violence-related crimes is being consistently used and added to an individual's criminal history record; 5) assist the Maryland Human Trafficking Policy Advisor with the development of a form to better track statistics on human trafficking incidents and outcomes; 6) create a population forecast of juveniles charged as adults within fifty-two state and local detention facilities to comply with federal juvenile justice monitoring requirements; 7) conduct a variety of research on pre-trial reform including the development of a validated pre-trial risk assessment tool and statewide jail database as well as evaluate the use of the risk assessment tool in pilot counties; 8) complete a process evaluation of three sites funded under the Safe Streets grant including the monthly monitoring of two sites; 9) provide assistance to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services with the launch of the agency's new Violence Prevention Initiative (VPI) screener which identifies offenders under parole and probation supervision that are the most likely to recidivate and be charged with a violence crime; and 10) continue to create and administer surveys for various public safety stakeholders on a variety of important criminal justice topics. The SAC will collaborate with GOCCP on all projects and also partner with various public safety agencies to complete these projects.
(CA/NCF)