Iowa's 2019 Statistical Analysis Center 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 Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning (CJJP), codified as Iowa’s SAC, is located within the Iowa Department of Human Rights (DHR). CJJP will use SJS funds for a core capacity project (Data Dashboard) and three special emphasis projects (Evaluation of Iowa’s Recidivism Reduction Initiative) (Analyze Outcomes of Indigent Defense Project) (Analysis of Sex Offender Special Sentence Supervision).

For the Data Dashboard project, CJJP will create interactive dashboards which will include interactive maps for visual display of statewide and county-level and juvenile justice data. The data will include aggregated juvenile delinquency and adult criminal court information. Currently, data dashboards are unavailable for court data.

For the Statewide Recidivism Reduction (SRR) initiative project, CJJP will conduct an evaluation of Iowa’s DOC SRR initiative by examining community-based recidivism defined as a new charge or conviction. The project will build on a previously SJS funded project for the Second Chance Act, SRR that enhanced public safety by reducing the state’s recidivism rate by supporting community-based strategies. Steps for this continuation project include: finalize the research analysis proposal with DOC; review national indicators of community recidivism; draw cohorts; begin analysis; assess data quality and reliability; and complete the final evaluation and report.

For the Analysis of Indigent Defense Outcomes, CJJP will complete the Indigent Defense Client Choice Pilot project that began in their SJS FY17 award. The remaining steps to be completed with SJS FY19 funds includes obtaining the final client choice satisfaction surveys; completing the data entry of the surveys under the client choice model; collect and clean case outcomes; analyze client satisfaction; perform a cost analysis of client choice; and finalize report for client choice, case outcome, and cost analysis.

For the Sex Offender Special Sentence Supervision Analysis, CJJP will conduct a longitudinal analysis which will examine cohorts of offenders tracked in 2014 for an additional five years. The research will examine whether rates of recidivism for a new sex crime has been sustained over a longer 8-year recidivism tracking period, as well as examine the current costs associated with the use of the supervision type. Project activities include: examining historical cohort and building new data files with additional variables to be explored; extracting recidivism data from Iowa’s Justice Data Warehouse; analyzing data from the JDW; forecasting prison population figures; performing costs analysis; and finalizing the report.

(CA/NCF)