Evaluation of Impaired Driving in Indiana

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. This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law, and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2CFR 200.210(a)(14).

The Indiana Statistical Analysis Center is housed within the Research and Planning Division of the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute (ICJI). Guided by a Board of Trustees representing all components of Indiana’s criminal and juvenile justice systems, ICJI serves as the State’s planning agency for criminal justice, drug and crime services, youth services, traffic safety, and victim services. The Institute develops long range strategies for the effective administration of Indiana’s criminal and juvenile justice systems and administers federal and state funds to carry out these strategies. The SAC is managed by a director and four research associates.

Under this award, the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute’s (ICJI) Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) will conduct activities under the following Special Emphasis area: Measuring criminal justice system performance. Indiana is beginning to notice a shift in impaired driving, especially in regard to collisions, where drug impaired collisions are becoming more prevalent than alcohol impaired collisions. The proposed multi-phase project will provide an assessment of impaired driving collisions at the county level, over a five-year period. The first phase of the analysis will assess if counties are beginning to see a shift in their impaired collisions and which type of impaired collisions are the most dangerous. The three types of impaired collisions that will be analyzed are alcohol impairment, drug impairment, and dual impairment (both drug and alcohol). ICJI will evaluate those collisions occurring from 2015 – 2019, using the following factors; injury, county, primary crash factor, restraint use, vehicle type, type of drugs, gender, age, and BAC (blood alcohol content) level. The second phase will analyze OWI (operating while intoxicated) citations, arrests, convictions and sentencing. The project will provide an in-depth statewide analysis of impaired driving which will help inform law enforcement initiatives to make Indiana’s roads safer from impaired drivers, support public safety planning, and allow ICJI to effectively use grant funding for traffic safety enforcement.

Funds are also requested for SAC staff to attend the 2019 ASUCRP Conference and the JRSA spring or fall meeting in 2020.

(CA/NCF)