Improving State Criminal History Records Through Analysis

JRSA is working with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) on a project designed to improve state criminal history records. The project allows State Statistical Analysis Centers (SACs) to develop the capacity to obtain and analyze their states' criminal history records or, in the case of SACs that already have this capacity, to participate in coordinated studies of key topics of interest to state justice decisionmakers. SACs will provide feedback to their state criminal history repositories on errors in the data discovered as the analyses are undertaken. This ongoing process of analysis and correction of data in the files will help improve the overall quality of the data in the criminal history records.

The first project involved SACs in nine states (Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah) studying sex offender recidivism using the criminal history records data. The second project, scheduled for completion in December of 2008, involves six SACs (Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, and Utah) using criminal history records to compile profiles of drug offenders in their states.