Georgia-Specific Pathways to Desistance: A Comprehensive Analysis of Juvenile Criminal Careers using Computerized Criminal History and Administrative Data AND Building the Georgia SAC Core Capac

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 Georgia Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is housed in the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), the state administering agency for Georgia's Edward Byrne-Justice Assistance Grants. The SAC will use funds to complete two projects: 1) A Comprehensive Analysis of Juvenile Criminal Careers Using Computerized Criminal History (CCH) and Administrative Data; and 2) Building the Georgia SAC Core Capacity for Cross-Agency Data-Sharing and Analysis.

The SAC will use funds to create a longitudinal dataset that matches records obtained from state computerized criminal history records, the Department of Juvenile Justice, and the Council of Juvenile Court Judges to determine which youth served in the juvenile justice system persist in their offending into adulthood. The goal of this longitudinal analysis is to further inform the state's efforts to implement the 2013 Juvenile Criminal Code Reform Act and support the proliferation of evidence-based, early intervention programs for juvenile offenders. The SAC will examine the data to determine which individual-level characteristics among juvenile offenders are related to continued offending into adulthood and draft a report of its findings to disseminate to state policymakers, criminal justice officials, and practitioners. Specifically, the study will address two groups of research questions: "Which individual characteristics of juvenile offenders are related to continued offending into adulthood? Are certain characteristics related to violent offending in adulthood? Do certain interventions at the juvenile level prevent or thwart continued offending into adulthood?" and "While analysis of adult CCH data reveals that offenders whose first arrest appears at age 17 in adult records tend to have more serious and chronic criminal careers, what kinds of offenses were these youth engaged in prior to their appearance in the adult system? Does specialization or escalation begin at an early age?" This project will further build the SAC's capacity to produce policy-relevant research using CCH and state agency administrative data and strenghten the SAA's ability to use quantifiable performance measures to manage state and federal juvenile justice dollars.

The SAC will use funds to partner with criminal justice and law enforcement agencies to build an Internet data-sharing highway that will increase access to state criminal justice statistical data. The SAC will collect aggregate-level data from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Administrative Office of the Courts, and Georgia Department of Corrections and will create a data portal accessible by each participating agency, accessed through a secure user interface, and shared for the purposes of analysis and interactive graphical presentations. This project will also allow the SAC to conduct more in-depth research into pressing criminal justice policy issues and provide timely and thorough responses to its respective stakeholders. (CA/NCF)