The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is the component of the U.S. Department of Justice responsible for advancing the practice of community policing by the nation's state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies through information and grant resources.  The COPS Office produces a monthly podcast series, The Beat, which features interviews with experts from many disciplines and provides law enforcement with the latest developments in community policing. Past Beat podcasts are archived and organized by topic, such as drugs, human trafficking, and use of force. The COPS Office offers an opportunity to subscribe to The Beat so it is delivered via email monthly.  The latest podcast features Jim Burch, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Police Foundation, who discusses the LEO Near Miss System.

With support from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center has produced 50 state-specific workbooks that contain more than 60 data visualizations showing historical trends and data comparisons related to crime, arrests, recidivism, and correctional populations, also providing policymakers with key questions to help identify opportunities to increase public safety in their jurisdictions. Top officials from every state contributed to the research featured in the workbooks.  The workbooks contain both national and state-specific analyses of data, as well as information about state research capacity and supervision practices collected through structured interviews conducted by the CSG Justice Center with each state’s corrections department. The data from these interviews represents each state’s assessment of its programs and practices, not an assessment by the CSG Justice Center.

A victim reaches a certain point . . . where they want to go on with their lives and not dwell on things that happened in the past.  That’s why it’s important that cases not be warehoused, that there be an analysis.

~Vernon Keenan, Director, GBI

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s (GBI) crime lab is making progress in its backlog of sexual assault evidence packages. The GBI Division of Forensic Science’s goal is to clear out the old rape kits by the first of next year, freeing it to concentrate on new criminal cases coming in for analysis.  The backlog has since been cut by more than two-thirds and now stands as fewer than 2,900. The GBI has contracted with an outside lab to process the older cases while the state’s 50 scientists and technicians focus on new cases.

This series of articles will discuss innovative approaches to critical issues affecting police departments across the country. I have asked law enforcement executives and other on-the-ground leaders to share some of the most important lessons they have learned from their years of experience. I hope this publication will be a platform for criminal justice leaders to learn about the approaches and strategies their contemporaries have taken to respond to emerging issues.”

~David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D., Director, National Institute of Justice (NIJ)

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) recently began publishing “Notes From the Field,” a series of articles that discuss innovative approaches to critical issues affecting police departments across the country.  In a recent issue, Mallory O’Brien, assistant professor, Medical College of Wisconsin, provides insight into Milwaukee’s two-pronged approach to the opioid crisis:  building comprehensive data sets and conducting event review of opioid fatality cases.  In addition, Chief Richard Biehl, of the Dayton, Ohio, Police Department, provides his insight into the key areas that departments should consider as they craft their opioid response strategies.

The world of criminal justice research is home to a wide range of data sets, owned and maintained by police agencies, courts, correctional facilities, and a myriad of other justice system actors. A problem in research can arise when these databases need to be matched with one another by individuals, often to study long-term events such as recidivism. The Washington State Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) encountered this persistent problem and worked to combat it with the assistance of the state's Education and Research Data Center. The Justice Research and Statistics Association (JRSA) is hosting a webinar with presenter Matt Landon from the Washington SAC, who will walk through a 2016 study on the workforce and recidivism outcomes of property offenders and detail the methods by which three discrete databases were combined.