Ohio Statistical Analysis Center

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 Ohio Statistical Analysis Center (OSAC) is placed within the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services (OCJS). The SAC is the Policy and Research arm of OCJS, which provides criminal justice planning and assistance for the State. The OCJS was created to provide the state a neutral criminal justice branch within its government to conduct the relevant, unbiased research and policy development for statewide cross functional purposes.

Under this award, the OSAC has proposed two projects – Three (3) Core Capacity and One (1) Special Emphasis.

In the first core capacity project, the OSAC proposes to use Ohio Incident-Based Reporting System data to collect, analyze and, study white collar crime. Traditionally, white collar crime has been difficult to study using NIBRS-compatible data due to the limitations in the data collection. The biggest challenge exist in the fact that NIBRS generally captures offense types that are committed at the individual, not organizational, level. This project will explore the feasibility of examining white collar crime using updated statistical techniques including crime mapping and overlaying socioeconomic and other factors to supplement data available through OIBRS.

In the second core capacity project, the OSAC proposes to update the criminal justice and non-criminal justice data sources available through the Ohio Data Dashboard. This improved system will allow the SAC to generate descriptive OIBRS reports and make them available to OCJS constituents through multiple venues. Access to these systems are vital to the SAC and the general public as they provide avenues as to exchange data and resources in a manner which both parties benefit.

In the third core capacity project, the OCJS has received several JAG fund request in recent years from law enforcement agencies for car dashboard cameras, and more recently, for body cameras. Given the potential for significant grant investment in this technology, the SAC proposes to assess the agencies that are requesting cameras, their associated policies, and their methods for collecting and analyzing data on camera usage.

In the special emphasis project, the OSAC proposes to develop and administer the Ohio Crime Victimization Survey (OCVS). This study has three objectives:

The first objective of the OCVS is to acquire state-specific victimization data that can be compared to national victimization data from the NCVS. This comparison will highlight differences between local and national crime victimization rates. The second objective of the OCVS is to supplement and validate OIBRS data. Currently, about 80% of Ohio is covered under OIBRS. While this coverage has substantially increased over the years, some law enforcement agencies still do not report to OIBRS. The final objective of the OCVS is to obtain estimates of cybercrime victimization in Ohio. While there are several agencies in Ohio and at the national level that focus on identifying and reporting Internet crime (e.g. the Internet Crime Complaint Center [IC3] as a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center), there has not been a local effort to develop accurate, statewide estimates of cybercrime. Obtaining these data will help law enforcement agencies and policymakers in Ohio address a growing area of crime in the state.

CA/NCF