2017 Louisiana SAC Core Project with Special Emphasis Project

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 Louisiana Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is the research division of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement (LCLE). The mission of the SAC is to provide research and analytic support for policy development on significant criminal justice issues at all levels of government, while producing basic information for the public and policymakers on the operation of the state's criminal justice system. LSAC is led by the SAC Director, Dr. Alex Priebe. The SAC Director is responsible for creating the research agenda, developing research protocols, collecting data, conducting analysis, and preparing reports for dissemination.

Under this award, LSAC will conduct activities under the following Core Capacity area: Increasing access to statistical data, and Special Emphasis area: Conducting targeted analyses utilizing the state's criminal history records. In the Core Capacity area, the LSAC will purchase a Tableau license to develop a crime statistics dashboard on the LCLE website. Drawing from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice's crime statistics website as an example, LSAC will display multi-year crime data that includes Louisiana census data, U.S. to Louisiana crime rates, arrest rates, arrest rates by parish (county), incarceration versus crime rates, and adult and juvenile correctional population data. Downloadable data files for each chart will be available for end users. In addition, LSAC plans to expand the scope of its annual Crime in Louisiana report to include maps and charts to visualize more than 10 years of data.

In the Special Emphasis area, the LSAC, in collaboration with the Louisiana Supreme Court (LSC) and the Louisiana Clerks of Court, will continue to conduct a data quality assessment and develop a remediation program. Louisiana has a long standing issue with the completeness and accuracy of criminal history record information. In an effort to address one specific area of concern, disposition and sentencing information accuracy, the LSAC will partner with the LSC to perform a data quality assessment, determine the contributing factors, and make recommendations for error remediation. In Phase I, LSAC executed a memorandum of understanding with the LSC to create a disposition/sentencing database for research and analytical purposes enhancing the LSAC's ability to provide support for policy makers and legislators. LSC's Criminal Management Information System purchased a server and created the database which it began to populate with data from each of the completed units. In Phase II, the SAC proposes to complete assessments on the remaining 52 units over a 24-month period. A global remediation plan with information on systemic issues and quality assurance findings from analysis conducted on the filing and disposition data held by LSC and other partner agencies will be developed.

(CA/NCF)

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