Training Course in the Analysis of Crime and the Criminal Justice System, Module 7 - Measure System Performance

• NCJ Number: 82353
• Author(s): W A Hamilton
• Date Published: Unknown
• Length: 0 pages
• Sale Source: Not Available Through National Institute of Justice/NCJRS Document Loan Program
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS. 2 videotapes, total running time 42 minutes, black and white, 1 inch - Part of the training course in the Analysis of Crime and the Criminal Justice System. See also NCJ-82345-82355 and NCJ-82357 for other videotapes. There is no Module 10 in this series; it was a training exercise.

Annotation

The President of the Institute for Law and Social Research discusses the purposes, advantages and disadvantages, data collection approaches, and information needs of Offender-Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS).

Abstract

Unlike the Uniform Crime Reports, OBTS records the outcome of criminal events by tracking arrestees as they pass through the police, the prosecutor, and the court system. By recording if bail was offered, type of counsel, the pretrial decision, the number of arrests resulting in conviction, and other events, OBTS hopes to assess the impact of individual agencies on other agencies in the system. OBTS has several different types of data collection approaches. Centralized data collection, used in California and New Jersey, involves forms being completed at the local level for each case. It is quick but expensive, and data can be unreliable since local courts are given no incentives to be accurate with their figures. The vertical approach (employing the State Judicial Information System and the Offender-Based Correctional Information System) involves presenting all local data in summary statistics to the relevant State agency. This reduces the separation of powers problem but takes much longer than the centralized system. Under the local system approach, local agencies use their automated tracking systems to produce OBTS. The Prosecutor Management Information System involves a local system approach but contains no corrections data. Fingerprint-based identification numbers, criminal incident numbers, and court docket numbers must be recorded in the OBTS system. OBTS is revealing criminal justice system performance measures never before shown by other systems. For example, OBTS can reveal indicators of system failure, such as few felony arrests resulting in conviction and recidivists accounting for a large portion of the court's caseload, and the reason behind these indicators. OBTS can also determine what factors in a police officer's background make that person more effective. OBTS findings must be translated into nontechnical language and must be associated by analysts with practical policy changes. Hinderances of OBTS data collection efforts, particularly those involving political and jurisdicitonal disputes, are mentioned.