FY 2020 Ohio State Justice Statistics Program

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 Ohio Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) is placed within the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services (OCJS). The SAC is also the Policy and Research arm of OCJS. OCJS is the lead criminal justice planning and assistance agency for Ohio. Although they are housed within the Ohio Department of Public Safety, OCJS is by constitution and statute separate from enforcement, courts, and corrections, providing a neutral criminal justice branch within state government. OCJS is officially designated the state administering agency for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG), the Violence Against Women Act grant (VAWA), the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) grant, the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement grant, the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP) grant, and the Family Violence Prevention Services (FVPSA) grant.

The OH SAC proposes two core capacity projects using the state's incident-based data. The first project focuses on automating the estimation of missing incident-based data. Approximately 63% of Ohio’s law enforcement agencies covering 83% of Ohio’s population participate in the Ohio Incident-Based Reporting System, OIBRS. The Ohio SAC uses OIBRS data to create numerous reports, dashboards, and other statistical products to provide information about crime in Ohio; however, accounting for incomplete OIBRS participation in these analyses is challenging and requires disclaimers about the completeness of the dataset. The current project will address this issue by developing a procedure for accurately estimating missing OIBRS monthly crime totals in an automated or semi-automated format. The second project is a study of the impact of COVID-19 on law enforcement and victims of domestic violence. The University of Cincinnati (UC) Institute of Crime Science will be working with the Office of Criminal Justice Services and the Ohio Statistical Analysis Center to study the impact of law enforcement agencies' responses to COVID-19 and look at domestic violence rates prior to, during, and following the stay-at-home order issued by Ohio’s governor, using the OIBRS dataset. (CA/NCF)