South Dakota 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 South Dakota Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is a component of an operational unit of the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI). The SAC administers the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Program and provides data to staff who administer the Edward J. Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. The SAC has historically used SJS funds to support its efforts to serve as the state clearinghouse for criminal justice and NIBRS data. Currently, approximately 95% of the state's population is covered by NIBRS. Prior year SJS funding has supported SAC efforts to annually develop and publish a detailed overview by crime type for Group A and Group B offenses. The SAC will use SJS funding to extend the Zuercher NIBRS Suite Report Tool to include two new Domestic Violence (DV) Reports and a separate Injury Type Report. All three reports will be published annually in the state's online Crime in South Dakota publication and additional analyses will be conducted as requested by criminal justice officials and policymakers. Currently, domestic violence is not an FBI NIBRS data element. FY 2014 SJS funding will enable the SAC to build access to obtaining information on domestic violence indicators and will improve the SAC's capability to collect additional data about the relationship between the victim and offender by injury type and give law enforcement officials access to data by offense code. Presently, the SAC does not have the querying capability to obtain this information from NIBRS. The successful completion of this project will improve and enhance the SAC's data collection and analytic capabilities to collect and report on important relationship and injury type data. (CA/NCF)