Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2014, $51,412)
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 Missouri Statistical Analysis Center (MoSAC) was established and operates under authority vested in the Missouri Department of Public Safety (DPS) pursuant to an Executive Order issued by the Governor (on file with BJS). The MoSAC is organizationally placed in the Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP), a DPS agency, and the Research and Development Division (RDD). The MoSAC is considered an analytical and statistical resource center for the executive branches of government at both the state and local level. The MSHP, under the auspices of DPS, provides policy direction as it relates to the Missouri Statistical Analysis Center's criminal justice scope of work.
Under this award, the MoSAC will coduct actvities under the following FY 2014 SJS Core Capacity Building area: Measuring criminal justice system "performance." The MoSAC will continue work on a collaborative study of Missouri sex offenders that fail to register (FTR). This study will provide valuable information regarding Missouri sex offender characteristics, associated crime types, and their propensity to re-offend. A FTR predictive model will be developed that identifies sex offenders with a propensity to not initially register or maintain their registry as required by law. The creation of an FTR predictive model would greatly assist law enforcement's management of registered sex offenders in the state by providing them with a tool that identifies sex offenders more likely to fail to register or abscond. With such a tool, law enforcement agencies could efficiently utilize their limited resources by focusing on problematic offenders. This focused effort would increase public safety awareness of sex offenders as the known locations of sex offenders would improve. (CA/NCF)