This article from the Winter 2011 edition of TechBeat discusses the Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections, a new mapping tool available for tracking offenders returning from prison and those under probation and parole supervision.
This article examines the Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections, a corrections-oriented online mapping tool that enables States and law enforcement agencies to better target scarce criminal justice resources. The tool was developed by the Justice Mapping Center and allows users to map the residential and distribution patterns of individuals returning from prison and those under probation and parole supervision. The system addresses four areas: it provides data on the types of prison admissions, it calculates costs associated with increased rates of incarceration and reentry, it addresses the disparity between a community's share of returning prisoners and its share of the overall residential population, and it provides a comparison based on gender of individuals admitted to and returning from prison. The system currently contains data for 22 States with plans to expand and update it on an annual basis.