FY 2020 Illinois 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.

The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) is a state agency created in 1983 to improve the administration of criminal justice in Illinois. It is located organizationally in the executive branch of state government, within the Public Safety domain of state agencies. Its statutory responsibilities [20 ILCS 3930] fall within four main areas: to serve as the state’s Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) through the efforts of its Research and Analysis (R&A) Unit; to serve as the State Administering Agency (SAA) for several criminal justice-related federal and state grant programs through the efforts of its Federal and State Grants Unit (FSGU); to advise the governor and the General Assembly on criminal justice policies and legislation; and to design, develop and support integrated criminal justice information systems within the state.

The agency is governed by a 25-member board composed of elected criminal justice officials, (county sheriffs, state’s attorneys, circuit court clerks); police chiefs; directors of state public safety agencies; and six members of the public appointed by the Governor. As part of the dissolution of the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority (IVPA) into the Authority in 2014, the directors of the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services were added as ex-officio board members. The duty to grant funds for violence prevention programs and provide technical assistance and training to help build the capacity of communities, organizations, and systems to develop, implement, and evaluate violence prevention programs was also transferred to the Authority [20 ILCS 3930/10.1].

Under the FY 20 SJS project, the IL SAC will conduct a one (1) year project that would examine parole data. This would include a variety of information about individuals released from prison and entering back into communities on conditions of supervision. The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) offers a parole dataset on its website, but it is not widely known, offers little by way of description, is challenging for users to work with, is not comparable to other state datasets, and there is no analyses of the data or visualizations to help users explore or understand its implications for prisoner reentry. In Illinois, parole data is the only reliable source of verifiable, street-level address data systematically collected statewide on where parolees reside. Currently, the Illinois SAC offers a state prison admissions dataset on the website, but not parole data. Both the Illinois SAC and IDOC do not have the staff, resources, or capacity to improve upon the current offerings. The proposed project is supported by IDOC in order to make the parole dataset more accessible and offer it in a more user-friendly way. In addition, the project will allow the Illinois SAC to offer a dataset, as well as data analysis and interpretations in multiple formats—data visualization and a summary article with figures and graphs. The public dataset on the Illinois SAC Research Hub website will include a combination of the following variables: DOB, sex, race, county and ZIP Code of residence, veteran status, sentence date, custody date, admission date, parole date, projected parole discharge date, offense type, offense class, admission type, and prison facility. (CA/NCF)