Enhancing the Utility and Quality of Incident-Based Data

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 Wisconsin SAC (WI SAC), as part of the Bureau of Justice Information and Analysis, is located within the Division of Law Enforcement Services at the Department of Justice (WDOJ). The WI SAC will use SJS funds to conduct a continuation Core Capacity project (Enhancing the Utility and Quality of Incident-Based Data).

The WI SAC will use SJS funds to continue to the development of data quality reports for law enforcement agencies related to Incident-Based Reporting (IBR) data, as well as making general Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) and IBR data more available to law enforcement agencies and the public. The project will enhance the ability to visualize, compare, and analyze details of incident-based data and further evaluate the quality and completeness of reported sexual assault data to support evidence-based decision making for law enforcement, policy makers and the community.

The project is an 18-month project with a two phased approach: 1) the first phase will expand on previously SJS funded projects to develop more NIBRS-specific data dashboards that explore the depth of NIBRS data and allow for the potential to highlight and visually display crime data across agencies throughout the state. Steps for this phase includes development of dashboards, testing, finalizing and publishing the dashboards; 2) the second phase involves a detailed analysis of the connection between incident-level sexual assault data reported through the UCR program and sexual assault kits identified as part of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI). Currently, incident level detail is collected through the state UCR program from both IBR agencies as well as Summary-Based Reporting agencies for all types of sexual offenses. The information provided by SAKI may provide insight into the quality and accuracy of the sexual offense information reported through the UCR program and may identify areas in reporting gaps across agencies that collect and report information. Steps for the second phase includes collecting information from the agencies, conducting analysis of data from UCR, SAKI, and local agencies, and developing and producing a final report with findings and recommendations.

(CA/NCF)