2016 State Justice Statistics Program for Statistical Analysis Centers

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 Alabama Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is located within the Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) Division of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA). The SAC serves as a clearinghouse of criminal justice information and is responsible for analyzing and disseminating crime data on domestic violence, rape, juveniles, and school violence in Alabama to members of the executive, legislative and judicial departments of government, media outlets and the public.

Under this award, the Alabama SAC will conduct activities under the following Core Capacity area: Increased access to statistical data, and Special Emphasis area: Conducting targeted analyses utilizing the state’s criminal history records. Alabama is in the midst of a multi-year redesign and deployment of its Computerized Criminal History (CCH) system. The goal of this redesign is to improve data quality and timeliness in the system by replacing paper-based data communication with electronic data exchange, and by improving the quality of the system design and its methodology for combining disparate data sources into a single cohesive crime data record. The SAC, through a partnership with the University of Alabama-Center for Advanced Public Safety (UA-CAPS) will use funds to continue efforts started under the 2014 and 2015 SJS programs. These efforts, some of which are still underway, produced a law enforcement portal (COLA), performance metrics analysis tool (CHAMP) of law enforcement data, a system for collecting UCR and NIBRS data (ULTRA), and the design and prototype of the Integrated Nexus Factor Observation (INFO) system as an innovative method for obtaining information from disparate criminal justice databases. Funds are being requested to complete INFO so that data can be generated from all databases, specifically the NIBRS-compliant ULTRA database and incorporate incident-based data into the portal for purposes of establishing patterns of criminal behavior and correlations between minor incidents and subsequent criminal activity. This information will be available to law enforcement officers and field administrators to conduct targeted analysis using all of the state’s crime data records as needed. Additionally, funds will be used for the SAC Director’s travel to attend the National Criminal Justice Association National Forum. (CA/NCF)

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.