JRSA - State analysts turning data into policy

JRSA FACT SHEETS and BRIEFS

Fact Sheets

JRSA produces these fact sheets and briefs to keep our members and the broader criminal justice community informed of contemporary issues in criminal justice research and policy. They address a wide range of topics or debates in an easy to digest fashion. JRSA is always looking for new ideas, so if you have a research or policy area you would like to see addressed in a fact sheet, please submit your idea to Susan Howley at [email protected].

Systematic Reviews: Part 1 in JRSA’s Publication Series on State-of-the-Art Practice in Literature Reviews (July 2021)
This first report in the series focuses on a type of literature review that is performed to review a body of research for the purpose of arriving at an overall conclusion about the effectiveness of an intervention: the systematic review. It describes the basic process for conducting a systematic review in this context, differentiates systematic from narrative reviews, and highlights two common features of systematic reviews that are employed to enhance the trustworthiness of the review findings: methodological quality considerations and meta-analysis. Read the Fact Sheet.

Economic Evaluation, Overview (December 2020)
This fact sheet is the first in a series of JRSA resources focused on economic evaluation. The purpose is to provide policymakers and researchers unfamiliar with economic evaluation with a basic introduction to the concept and its most common applications. It explains what economic evaluation is and how it differs from conventional outcome evaluation, describes the three most common approaches, and briefly discusses the value of cost-benefit analysis as a decision-making tool in the criminal justice system. Read the Fact Sheet.

Women and Girls in Corrections (November 2020)
This fact sheet provides an overview of adult and juvenile females in the correctional population. Overall population trends across correctional settings, including race breakdowns and offense patterns, will be presented. It also highlights some of the specific physical and mental health needs of this population while incarcerated, provides an overview of collateral consequences they face upon reentry, and briefly discusses gender-responsive and trauma-informed services needed to address these concerns. Read the Fact Sheet.

Modes of Access to State Criminal History Records by Statistical Analysis Centers (November 2020)
This fact sheet is the second in a series of publications exploring the uses of Criminal History Record Information (CHRI) by state Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) staff and other criminal justice researchers. It seeks to describe the varieties of relationships that Statistical Analysis Centers (SACs) have cultivated with their state repositories and other source agencies to enable and facilitate access to CHRI. Read the Fact Sheet.

Using State Criminal History Records for Research and Evaluation (June 2019)
This fact sheet intends to raise awareness in the criminal justice research community about the value of CHRI data for both research and program evaluation. It briefly describes how CHRI has evolved and improved in quality over time, and it discusses the types of studies CHRI data could potentially support, as well as some of the challenges a researcher may encounter in accessing and using CHRI data. Read the Fact Sheet.

Conducting Reliable Research on Parole Outcomes: Factors to Consider (January 2019)
This fact sheet provides a brief overview of some of the factors that may impact the ability to conduct reliable research on parole outcomes. It also highlights the importance of accounting for institutional and environmental influences on parole outcomes, reviews some of the ways that researchers can empirically measure them, and identify common analytic challenges in these efforts. Read the Fact Sheet.

Implicit Racial Bias (December 2018)
This fact sheet provides a brief overview of implicit racial bias as it relates to the different stages of the criminal justice system. It also briefly discusses various mechanisms used to address the issue of implicit racial bias and what we know about their effectiveness. Read the Fact Sheet.

Web Scraping (December 2017)
This fact sheet provides a brief overview of Web scraping, one method, new to criminal justice researchers, being utilized to harness these new data access opportunities. This fact sheet intends to introduce criminal justice researchers to web scraping by explaining what it is, how it works, and providing examples of its use in the field.
Read the Fact Sheet.

Research Briefs

Using Implementation Science as a Framework for Measuring Program Performance: A Case Study (July 2021)
This research brief provides an illustrative case example of how implementation science can be used to inform process and performance measures to monitor implementation. Using a project of the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) and the project’s evaluation as an example, we examine common factors that are known to influence implementation of programs or projects and offer an example of how to measure and track them through a real-life case study.
Read the Research Brief.

Research on Restorative Justice Practices (December 2020)
This research brief is the first in a series of reports on the concept, application, and effectiveness of restorative justice practices in criminal and juvenile justice. It describes the overall premise of restorative justice, defines the prominent restorative justice approaches being used in the justice system today, and summarizes findings from contemporary synthesis research on the effectiveness of restorative justice in reducing recidivism and promoting other positive outcomes for offenders and victims. Future reports in the series will take deeper dives into real-world applications of restorative justice as well as research findings on the effectiveness of specific restorative justice approaches.
Read the Research Brief.

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