Criminal Justice 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. 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 Kentucky Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) was officially transferred from the Office of the Attorney General to the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet (KJPSC), Office of the Kentucky Criminal Justice Council, in March 2000. Because of the SAC’s placement within the KJPSC, the research efforts and daily operations are directly linked to the Cabinet’s policy and planning goals as well as other statewide and national efforts to collect, analyze, and disseminate data on topics that impact law enforcement and criminal justice efforts. Marjorie Stanek is the SAC Research Coordinator and is responsible for the SAC’s day-to-day operations and major research projects.

Under this award, the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet’s Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) will conduct activities under the following Core Capacity area: Increasing access to statistical data, and Special Emphasis area: Targeted analyses that use the state’s criminal history records. In the Core Capacity area, the SAC will link a dataset of recipients of substance abuse programming (SAP) through the Kentucky Department of Corrections (DOC) with additional sources of administrative and case management data. The ability to pair new sources of data with existing information will increase access to administrative and operational data and help to measure the performance of substance abuse programming within the Kentucky DOC, and will provide a more complete picture of what occurs once an individual renters the community.

In the Special Emphasis area, the SAC is requesting funds to build upon the proposed Core Capacity project and use the created data set to compare the outcomes (e.g., re-arrest, return to custody, overdose-related death, treatment for non-fatal overdose, etc.) of participants who have received substance abuse programming while living within the institution’s general population with those that have participated in programming at a self-contained substance abuse program. The project will take place over 18-months, and will provide evidence that will help Kentucky and other states to more effectively direct scarce funding, improve the translation of evidence into program, practice, and policy decisions, and will provide a mechanism by which the performance of various substance abuse treatment efforts within the criminal justice system can be assessed.

Funds are also requested for in-state project travel and for the SAC Director to attend the 2019 ASUCRP Conference, as well as one of the 2020 JRSA Regional meetings.

(CA/NCF)