Justice Center

Alaska Justice Forum

A Publication of the Justice Center
Winter 2005 Index | PDF
University of Alaska Anchorage

Vol. 22, No. 1

SAC Coordinates Data Sharing
Justice Center, University of Alaska Anchorage. (Spring 2005). "SAC Coordinates Data Sharing." Alaska Justice Forum 22(1): 6. This brief article describes the effort by the Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) to improve access by researchers and administrators to data from various Alaska criminal justice agency data bases.
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> Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center  
The Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center (SAC), which is part of the Justice Center, is leading an effort to make access to the various criminal justice agency data bases easier for researchers and administrators who need data from across the entire justice process. Until recently, it has been almost impossible to coordinate record-matching among the various data bases, so it has been very difficult to follow individual cases from arrest through disposition.
     The SAC, working with other agencies, has a established a multi-agency-based database on a new server, including records from law enforcement agencies, the Alaska Department of Law, and the Alaska Court System. Records from other agencies will be added in the future. Work is in progress to establish public data subsets from which confidential information, or other protected information, has been removed. A cross-indexing capability will permit users to coordinate records from the different components of the criminal justice process, linking the disparate data items that each agency maintains on individual cases.
     At present, the database is not accessible except by special permission from the agencies whose records are involved. The agencies contributing records are currently working on the memoranda of agreement necessary to establish the protocols for wider use.
     The new database will be accessible through the SAC website at www.ajsac.state.ak.us. (This website is also linked with the main Justice Center site at justice.uaa.alaska.edu.)

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