| About the SAC |
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The Oregon Statistical Analysis Center provides the Governor, Legislature, and Criminal Justice Agencies with a capability for objective research and data analysis. Under this program SACs are eligible for funding to carry out data collection and analysis of criminal justice themes/topics of significant interest to criminal justice policy and decision makers. These themes are identified each year by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Justice Research and Statistics Association. In Oregon it is a function of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, funded in part by awards from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S Dept. of Justice. SAC funding from BJS is limited to the following themes for FY 2004:
- deaths in police custody
- prison rape and victimization confinement facilities
- civil justice statistics
- research involving computer related crimes
- increase in Web access to data
- performance measurement
- analysis of criminal history records
- research using incident-based crime data
- any theme or topic identified by SAC applicant
There are currently SACs in over 52 states and territories.
Current Activities
The Statistical Analysis Center´s main focus is to serve as a clearinghouse for the collection, analysis and dissemination of information on state and local sentencing practices. The SAC maintains a data base of felony guidelines sentencing reports submitted since 1991. The data base also includes information taken from criminal history worksheets supplied with many of the sentencing reports.
The SAC provides direct support to the agency development of legislative fiscal impact statements. These statements are required for proposed legislation that may increase or decrease state costs for prison beds and felon supervision. The SAC relies on data from sentencing reports and their criminal histories. Other data sets used in the development of the impact statements include admissions to the Department of Corrections (DOC), and criminal court case filings from the Oregon Judicial Department.
The DOC data includes information on all charges of conviction while the felony sentencing reports only provide for the three most serious convictions. Judicial Department filings give statistics on charges brought for each crime.
History
The first Oregon Statistical Analysis Center was established in 1973 as the Justice Data Analysis Center. In 1982 the Center´s parent agency, the Law Enforcement Council, was defunded and the Statistical Analysis Center was transferred to the Oregon Department of Justice where it was known as the Crime Analysis Center. In 1993 the statistical Analysis Center was tranferred to the Criminal Justice Services Division of what is now the Department of Administrative Services. In 1994 the Statistical Analysis Center was transferred to the Commission´s predessor agency the Criminal Justice Council. The Oregon Statistical Analysis Center has been authorized under Oregon Revised Statute 137.656 and is provided oversight by the Criminal Justice Commission Members.
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