Arizona 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 Arizona SAC (SAC), housed within the AZ Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC) will use SJS funds to support two core capacity building projects: 1) An Assessment of Incident-Based Reporting (IBR) Reporting in Arizona; and 2) Evaluating Arizona’s Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) programs).

For the Assessment of IBR Reporting project, the SAC will assess National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) compliance across the state agencies currently using an IBR system to eventually improve participation in NIBRS statewide. Only four of the 120 LEAs in Arizona have transitioned to IBR. In order to ensure that all agencies are fully armed with the tools and knowledge to become NIBRS-compliant, the SAC will first examine 1) the indicators behind AZ’s participation level, 2) the successes and obstacles faced by agencies that already transitioned from UCR to IBR reporting, inconsistencies in reporting between state agencies and any deviation from national standards, and 4) practices and tools that will help bring an understanding and allow for a seamless transition for other LEAs to move to NIBRS. In addition, the SAC will review the landscape of the agencies across the state with a survey and a sample of Key Informant Interviews (KII) to gain a level of understanding on who is using UCR, who is using IBR and who attempted to transition but did not complete the transition. The primary objective of the project is to deliver to BJS an assessment of the NIBRS landscape in Arizona as well as a collection of generalizable resources tailored to law enforcement at different stages of implementation through a final report and a PowerPoint presentation. The SAC will provide an evaluation and conduct a full inventory of LEAs and their reporting practices which includes an understanding of best practices and areas that need improvement.

The SAC will also use SJS funds to conduct an evaluation of four RSAT programs to assess and determine “best practice” standards which were addressed in the “Promising Practices Guidelines for RSAT” report. As part of the research project, SAC will conduct in-depth stakeholder interviews with relevant staff from the programs. In connection with the findings from the interviews, the SAC will also develop and administer a survey to understand the functions of the RSAT programs as it relates to processes, service delivery, and fidelity to promising practice guidelines. The electronic survey will match relevant best practices to their respective stakeholders to ensure appropriate interpretation of the findings. Once the surveys have been completed, the SAC will follow-up with site visits to discuss the results and findings. Once the site visits have been conducted, the SAC will begin drafting an evaluation report and best practices document with the idea to submit the final version to BJS and other stakeholders. The project’s objective is to increase knowledge in the RSAT base in Arizona and nationally. The SAC will also gain additional experience in the areas of program evaluation, mixed-methods research, survey design, and establishing relationships with stakeholders. (CA/NCF)

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