1997 HB 2229 emphasized that to serve public safety we must assess juvenile and adult correctional programs by their ability to reduce offenders' future criminal conduct. A significant gap exists, however, in that there is no effective way to share juvenile and adult and state and local data to learn what best diverts which offenders from criminal careers.

Executive Order EO 97-18 directed the Superintendent of State Police to convene a working group to study and make recommendations regarding the criminal justice community's need for performance data and useful research thereto. This group was active in the latter part of 1997 and throughout 1998. The Working Group was free to consider any related issues and initiatives that it identified. The working group and subcommittees that it formed reviewed two proposals. The first was for a criminal justice policy research institute to act as a coordination point for criminal justice research in Oregon. The second was for a decision support system to support the work of criminal justice practitioners.

An Interim Report was published on July 1, 1998. It detailed the body of Oregon law that related to the scope of the Executive Order. Related projects and activities at the state and local level were discussed at length. The interim report set forth the consensus that had been reached to date regarding the issues before it.

The Final Report reflects further discussion and considerable staff work to flesh out details for the consensus recommendations of the Working Group.

Much work has been accomplished since the signing of the Executive Order. This effort is not at an end, but is just beginning. There is a proposal to support criminal justice decision making using data that is multi-disciplinary in its origin. The concept has become known as the public safety data warehouse. It would take existing data from multiple sources and combine it in a way that will allow it to be easily used to benefit the criminal justice community, and the public, in Oregon. Its development, while straightforward, is time consuming. The consensus is that the work must begin immediately. Recognizing that participants have limited financial resources and priority obligations, $2.2 million in Federal funds are being sought to fund the initial development of the state level warehouse.

The research community has developed a proposal to institutionalize development of an Oregon criminal justice research agenda, coordination of research, and competition for federal criminal justice research dollars. It is a cooperative effort of state criminal justice agencies and the Department of Higher Education. The partner agencies that have developed the concept call it the Oregon Criminal Justice Research Institute. The partners are convinced of its value to the point where state agencies agreed to provide the initial funding.

HB2229 set a clear direction for the measure of the effectiveness of correctional programs. The recommendations of the working group, if funded and implemented, will provide the essential infrastructure to accomplish that charge.

The Final Report examines topic areas that the Interim Report identified for further discussion. Background information set forth in the Interim Report is not repeated in the Final Report. Each topic is identified, interim report conclusions regarding the topic are restated, additional information developed since the interim report are included. Final conclusions and recommendations are then set forth. Appendices include more detail information where the Working Group considered it helpful. The focus of the Final Report is the identification of operational solutions to issues regarding the criminal justice community's need for performance data and useful research thereto.

Interim Report Conclusions Regarding Criminal Justice Research:

The July 1, 1998 H13 2229 Interim Report concluded that a criminal justice research body must be institutionalized in state government. It must be a neutral entity with stable funding. It must have a working relationship with higher education, and must coordinate its activities with the research capabilities of individual agencies. The working group must resolve issues of organizational location, governance, primary and secondary functions, relationship to entities currently tasked with a research responsibility, and funding.

Establishing a Criminal Justice Research Institute

The Research Sub-committee and an ad hoc group from Oregon's System of Higher Education met to discuss implementation of the interim recommendations. Their work was subsequently reviewed in December 1998 by the entire Working Group on Effectiveness Data and Research Needs which resulted in the following consensus points.

a. Purpose

• To develop capacity within Oregon's System of Higher Education to better meet Oregon's criminal justice research needs;
• To provide applied research and technical assistance to state and local criminal justice administrators;
• To provide relevant information to policy makers in the legislature, the executive branch and the judicial community;
• To augment existing criminal justice research efforts by accessing federal and private funds;
• To assist the Criminal Justice Commission to develop a statewide biennial research and evaluation agenda;
• To provide additional research opportunities for university faculty and students; and
• To generate unbiased objective information for creating more effective criminal justice programs, by informing policy makers, program administrators, advocacy groups, and the public.

• In 1994 the Oregon Department of Corrections and Portland State University proposed the creation of the Criminal Justice Research Policy Institute.
• In 1995 the State Board of Higher Education approved the proposal and established the institute within the School of Urban Studies at Portland State University (now within the Mark 0. Hatfield School of Government), although no funding was provided.
• The 1997 Legislature enacted House Bill 2229 which required that criminal justice programs measure their effectiveness in reducing offenders future criminal conduct.
• In September of 1997 Governor Kitzhaber signed Executive Order 97-18 directing the superintendent of the State Police to convene a workgroup to assess the criminal justice communities need for performance data and applied research.
• In July of 1998 the workgroup issued an interim report which, among other things supports, the creation of a Criminal Justice Research InstituteMarch 28, 1999

• The demand for program/policy effectiveness data exceeds the individual agencies' research capabilities;
• State and local agencies will be unable to increase their research capabilities to keep pace with the demand;
• The statutory requirements for outcome evaluation in HB 2229 and SB 1145 (as two examples of this increased need) will not be adequately addressed without increased research capacity,
• Existing research activities across agencies can be better coordinated to increase overall research capacity, and
• Oregon's universities are uniquely positioned to augment state agency efforts by providing faculty expertise, more flexible positions, access to alternative funding, greater public credibility, and an existing research infrastructure.

• A high level of cooperation among the various state and local criminal justice agencies;
• A partnership which recognizes and accommodates the profound differences in the mission, organizational characteristics, and research traditions among the universities and the criminal justice agencies;
• A stable funding base that can expand or contract to meet fluctuating needs and is not influenced by specific research findings or philosophies; and
• A university based structure that is responsive to both the needs of its client agencies and state policy makers.

• Activate the existing Criminal Justice Research Institute within the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University by providing a core staff of a Director, an office support specialist and funding for two half-time graduate student researchers;
• Member criminal justice agencies with immediate research needs should, through intergovernmental agreements, provide funding for core staff;
• Create an advisory committee comprised of the member criminal justice agencies, participating institutes of higher education (not limited to Portland State University) and a representative from an established group that advocates for crime victims;
• The advisory committee, in coordination with the Criminal Justice Commission, should develop a statewide research agenda which may include the following studies and projects: evaluation of the juvenile crime initiative, prison privatization, and SB 1145.
• The Institute will have access to the Oregon Public Safety Data Warehouse.

Interim Report Conclusions Regarding Decision Support:
The Interim Report noted that a number of state agencies are already addressing data warehouse initiatives as part of the state 1999-2001 Information Resource Management (IRM) planning process. Access to multiple agency data regarding individuals is essential to support criminal justice research, management decision making, and some operational decisions. While the specifics of conducting program effectiveness measurement have yet to be agreed upon, there is a consensus that a data warehouse and data analysis tools would be fundamental to that effort.

The Interim Report concluded that the establishment of state criminal justice data warehouse is a necessary step toward total integration of state criminal justice information. It would be an access point for information about individuals that is contained in many criminal justice agencies. It would support the state Criminal Justice Information Standards (CJIS) statutory program goal to ensure that data can be retrieved to support evaluation of criminal justices planning, and programs. It would be in concert with a similar initiative at the federal level. It would support state research efforts and would be a source of data to local government.

Consensus of the Decision Support Working Group:
The Decision Support Working Group recommended that criminal justice agencies all participate in constructing and maintaining a data warehouse or series of linked data warehouses. Users in each agency should be equipped with the software tools necessary to access the data efficiently, powerfully, and flexibly to serve the information and analytical needs of each agency.

Available resources and each agency's priorities will determine the number of users they can provide with data warehouse access and the tools they can provide to those users. Subject to confidentiality requirements, agencies should provide for public access consistent with the agency's function and the public's rights under public records laws to facilitate citizen access to and use of this information.

While there is support for the development of a data warehouse there is agreement that it not be at the expense of continuing development of partner agencies' information systems. Their basic agency business cannot be conducted without these systems, and without them they would have little of value to contribute to a warehouse.

Agencies that have access to this warehouse and its tools are each responsible for their own use and reliance on the results of their queries. The data warehouse system and participating agencies are not accountable or responsible for the use to which another agency puts this set of tools. Each is encouraged, of course, to make the best use of tools for refining and correcting queries -- tools which range from traditional research to sophisticated data access and linking tools.

Each agency that contributes data to the warehouse is responsible for maintaining and monitoring the integrity of the data it adds to the databases, and each is responsible for adhering to CJIS data standards. The data warehouse administrator will assure the overall integrity of data in the warehouse.

Each agency would retain the obligation to adhere to lawful restrictions on access to confidential data in its control and to condition access to such data as it deems necessary to fulfill its responsibilities to protect that data from improper access or dissemination. Contributing data to a warehouse does not nullify those responsibilities. Agencies will cooperate in arriving at operational and technological means appropriate to that end. It is the responsibility of each agency to determine what conditions and limitations on user access are sufficient to permit that agency to contribute confidential data to the warehouse.

Project Plan and Budget
A project plan and comprehensive budget was developed that defined a phased implementation of a number of components. Definition of the content of each component was based on a phased implementation approach, timelines that approximated a single biennium's workload, and projects that would be undertaken by different sponsoring agencies. The first component is an initial public safety data warehouse which would house the data of the Oregon State Police, Oregon Judicial Department and the Department of Corrections. This effort would establish the data warehouse infrastructure, house data critical to program effectiveness measurement and research, and provide participating agencies with access to integrated data for their information needs. Subsequent components would expand the warehouse to other contributing agencies, enhance information infrastructure for use of the warehouse within the judicial community, and support enhanced research use of the warehouse.

Description of The Oregon Public Safety Data Warehouse:
Current criminal justice information systems were created autonomously and cannot adequately communicate and share information. Although these information systems gather data on many of the same offenders, often overlapping the same information, data within those autonomous systems are stored in differing formats and have numerous meanings, dependent upon the agency from which they are collected. Attempting to analyze the criminal history of an offender in the State of Oregon or the effectiveness of a particular program or practice within the criminal justice community requires, gathering data from several State agencies to evaluate the process. Once gathered, these data must be transformed and merged to a standard format for use in analysis. Without a standard structure or a central site from which to gather data, it remains a lengthy and impractical process to gather, transform, and evaluate data from across the criminal justice system. This evaluation must be done to arrive at a true picture of the relationship between the activities of the various criminal justice agencies and the effectiveness of current practices. Recent legislation has attempted to reform this situation by mandating data be gathered from the criminal justice community information systems and stored centrally for the purpose of research and evaluation of the criminal justice process.

HB 2229 requires that the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission's comprehensive and long-range plan include recommendations concerning "methods of assessing the effectiveness of juvenile and adult correctional program, devices, and sanctions in reducing future criminal conduct by juvenile and adult offenders." Similarly, HB 2229 clarifies that in its responsibility for designing and implementing applications for the coordination and sharing of information among criminal justice agencies and retrieval of data to support evaluation of criminal justice planning programs, the Oregon State Police must ensure that data retrieval will permit evaluation of "the ability of programs to reduce future criminal conduct."

The data warehouse architecture provides a central repository for data either agency or inter-agency wide that is specifically designed for business and policy analysis. The warehouse database is separated from the operational application systems that collect the data and is optimized for query processing. The data are cleansed and manipulated either during extraction from the operational system to the warehouse or once inside the warehouse to a standard format. Data are grouped and stored by business area, and use standard business language to define their meaning, hiding the complexity of the operational databases from which the data came. Although a data warehouse is designed to analyze historical and summary information, individual detail records are also stored within the warehouse to retain the ability to look (consistent with confidentiality laws) at detail records.

The proposed Public Safety Data Warehouse (PSDW) will be the central repository of criminal justice information in the state of Oregon. Both summary and detail information will be kept to analyze criminal justice policies and programs, and to allow a single offender to be tracked through the criminal justice process. This data warehouse will enable analysis of criminal justice programs and policies to be done across agencies in considerably less time than currently possible. Data in the PSDW will be in a common format, eliminating the need for the analyst to perform complex and time consuming data conversions prior to analysis.

The goal of the PSDW is to provide a central point for data from which decisions can be made regarding the criminal justice system and the effectiveness of criminal justice programs, including their ability to reduce future criminal conduct.

Implementation Principles:
The implementation of a decision support system requires that the objectives be clearly defined. One of the objectives should address the data used to drive the applications and validate any fundamental assumptions regarding the availability of data and the ability to match it.

The value of any application is partially based on the quality of the data. Data quality is influenced by many factors most important of which is age. Applications that seek to use the most current data are transaction-based systems that use production files as opposed to a data warehouse. A data warehouse application therefore may be limited by the currency of the data it contains. System limitations such as processor availability, communications resources and machine disk storage space will define how often data warehouses are updated. Most data warehouses are updated once a week.

The use of warehouse data to drive critical applications is only recommended if the warehouse can be updated frequently enough to provide data that is current enough to support the needs of the decision support application.

A limiting factor in the planning of data warehouse projects is the availability of key personnel who understand the data involved in the development effort. A well planned project could experience considerable schedule difficulty simply because key data and business analysts are unavailable.

Data Warehouse Components
Implementation of a state data warehouse implies that it will be part of a program that deals with issues such as comparability of data from various sources, reliability of that data, timeliness, security, and confidentiality. It would support the state Criminal Justice Information Standards (CJIS) program goal to ensure that data can be retrieved to support evaluation of criminal justice planning and programs. It would be in concert with a similar initiative at the federal level. It would support state research efforts and would be a source of data to local government. The actual data warehouse would be located at the State Police Law Enforcement Data System (LEDS) facility in Salem.

Development of a public safety data warehouse involves four components:

a. Initial Criminal Justice Data Warehouse:
The proposed Public Safety Data Warehouse initial project will include data from three major criminal justice agencies: the Oregon State Police (OSP), the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC), and the Oregon Judicial Department (OJD). Juvenile data from the Oregon Youth Authority (OYA) and other sources should be included in the warehouse as soon as it can responsibly be accomplished. The convergence of these three agencies' data will provide the participating agencies and others with a more complete representation of the process of criminal justice in Oregon than has previously been available. The goal of this phase of the data warehouse initiative is to build the framework on which this centralized criminal justice information system is based and to benefit from the experience generated by the initial users of the warehouse.

The initial project effort would design and develop a pilot criminal justice data warehouse including data from LEDS, Corrections, and Courts correlated around people, events, and processes, for policy analysis purposes. The initial project would perform business and data analysis for the initial data warehouse composed of data from these agencies. The result would be a data warehouse that would allow users from participating agencies to perform trend analysis, statistical analysis, research, informational support, and distribution of data to other entities. Program effectiveness measures and underlying performance data that can be derived from the data of the three contributing agencies would be available. Data quality and availability would impact the usefulness of the information.

The benefits of the construction of this data warehouse initial project include:

• Criminal justice agencies will have access to data from multiple sources for their operational and information support needs.
• Additional criminal justice agencies will be able to add relevant data to the model created in the initial project.
• The transformation of inter-agency data into the standard CJIS compliant format will enable data from autonomous information systems to be linked and evaluated.
• The integration of these agencies' data may uncover the potential for a new and innovative evaluation of the criminal justice processes and programs that span multiple agencies.
• The limitations and/or complete lack of relevant data currently captured by each agency will be exposed and recommendations to capture this data in the future may be made.
• A central distribution point for criminal justice data across the state will be created enhancing the ability to disseminate accurate and timely information to federal, state, and local governments and the public.
• Some tactical decision making would be possible depending on the relevance of the stored data to the proposed application and the frequency with which the data is refreshed versus the timeliness required by the application.

b. Expansion to Other Relevant State and Local Agencies
An additional component of implementation builds on the initial warehouse by the addition of other CJIS agencies' data to the data warehouse database. This will include State and county juvenile offender data if not already included, and other State and possibly local criminal justice information systems and warehouses. The outcomes from this component of the warehouse implementation plan include:

• The initial project will be enhanced to include juvenile information to better enable decision making regarding the correlation between juvenile delinquency and future criminal conduct.
• Additional complexity will be added in the evaluation of criminal justice practices either reinforcing or refuting previous analysis.
• The integration of additional criminal justice information will allow analysts to determine if there is sufficient information available to accurately assess the effectiveness of criminal justice practices and programs that span multiple agencies. Recommendations that additional information to be captured in an agency's operational information system can be made if need be.
• The ability to track a single offender through Oregon's criminal justice system will be greatly enhanced.
• The ability to match offenders with appropriate programs and services within the criminal justice community will be increased by the additional agency data and subsequent evaluation and analysis.

c. Expanded Infrastructure for Tactical Decision Support Applications
This additional component would support expansion of information infrastructure to exploit PSDW resources within the judicial department. With expanded and sophisticated software and readily available hardware and the information staff to support both, judges and criminal justice practitioners should be able to make the best use of PSDW and data analysis to make decisions based on assessment of how best to reduce the future criminal behavior of offenders. By affording all involved access to the best information about which choices are most likely to reduce crime by which offenders, PSDW will contribute to the more efficient and effective utilization of current criminal justice resources.

The proposal would deliver the capability to 185 judges and court administrators within the judicial system. The project would be the responsibility of the Oregon Judicial Department. The estimate for this component is $2.5 million.

d. Statistical Analysis Center Support
Using the data gathered from the three agencies participating in the Initial project phase of the data warehouse, analysis of current criminal justice policies and practices may be done. The benefits from this phase of the data warehouse implementation include:

• Criminal justice trend and statistical analysis will be possible across agency lines.
• Research and evaluation of various programs and practices within the criminal justice community may be done to either validate current practices and programs or determine the need for change.
• A more accurate picture of the current recidivism rates of offenders may be gained by the integration of re-arrest and reconviction data.
• An integrated knowledge base will be created at the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (OCJC) statistical analysis center for the evaluation of criminal justice data.

Interim Report Conclusions Regarding Program Effectiveness Measures:
The interim report recognized that a viable means of assessing program effectiveness measures is fundamental to the implementation of HB 2229. Effectiveness measures that are in the spirit of HB 2229 are not available other than in a very limited form. The Department of Corrections, Oregon Youth Authority, and the Criminal Justice Commission all have roles under one or more statutes. There will be more discussion to develop a common understanding of program effectiveness in reducing future criminal behavior and agreement reached on methods of measurement, assessment of offender needs, and tracking of the availability of correctional resources.

Conclusions Regarding Program Effectiveness Measures:
The proposed public safety data warehouse will provide a viable means of collecting data to support measurement of program effectiveness. The Department of corrections, Oregon Youth Authority, and the Criminal Justice Commission, as well as other entities and the public, will have access to the information.

Completion of the Oregon Youth Authority JJIS system will make available a wealth of juvenile information. It will bring greater uniformity to collection of juvenile data. JJIS will contribute to the tracking of an offender from juvenile through adult programs. The planned carry over of data from the OYA JJIS system to the Department of Corrections system will be the catalyst to discussing comparability of juvenile and adult effectiveness measures and definitions of recidivism.

The HB 2229 emphasis on reduction of future criminal conduct provides a legislative mandated measure of program effectiveness. Both the OYA and Department of Corrections plan additional effectiveness measures that address additional aspects of their correctional programs and other programs that are not correctional in nature.

This section presents specific conclusions and recommendations based on the research, discussions, and consensus of the Working Group

1. Both Decision support and research needs require a technology that is not available on a statewide level. There is a wealth of existing data that exists in a number of state and local information systems that support a number of criminal justice disciplines. Access to it, and the ability to manipulate it to support decision making that is in the spirit of HB2229 will require a technology solution in the form a public safety data warehouse.

2. The development of a public safely data warehouse is an urgent priority. There are many legal mandates that support the need for the public safety data warehouse. It would provide the foundation for decision making based on the reduction of future criminal conduct of an offender. The need for program planning and evaluation data has been repeatedly emphasized by the legislature and by criminal justice practitioners. The technology exists and the legal basis to implement it is sound. It is time to move forward.

3. Development of a data warehouse is time consuming. The timetable for the initial phase of the warehouse project is 31 months. This will establish the basic infrastructure and collect data from three agencies. The Judicial Department will exploit whatever the PSDW can offer to provide better information for sentencing decisions as soon as it can responsibly do so. Inclusion of data contributed by additional agencies will take additional time and expense both for the warehouse and the contributing agencies.

4. Alternative funding for the data warehouse should be sought. While the data warehouse must be developed, the working group was adamant that it not be funded at the detriment of any participating agency's infrastructure. Recognizing the shortfall in state general funds, Federal grant funds have been sought to keep the warehouse project going forward. Possible sources for these funds exist within the Federal Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (OJP), and Bureau of Justice Assistance.

5. The criminal justice policy research institute must be supported. Oregon needs to set a comprehensive criminal justice research agenda, maximize research efforts, and successfully compete for Federal and private sector funding. Establishing the research institute as recommended would be a low cost venture funded by the participants.

6. The dialog regarding program effectiveness measures will be ongoing. HB 2229 has set the standard for correctional programs as the reduction of future criminal conduct by an offender. There is also a need for effectiveness measures that address additional aspects of correctional programs and other programs that are not correctional in nature.

APPENDIX A  Governor's Executive Order 
APPENDIX B  House Bill 2229 (1997) 

APPENDIX C Working Group and Subcommittee Members:
Working Group Membership
Major Jim Willis, Oregon State Police, Chair
Karen Brazeau, Oregon Youth Authority
Steve Carmichael, Oregon Juvenile Department Directors Association
Catarino Cavazos, Street Vision
Barbara Cimaglio, Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs
Ben deHaan, Department of Corrections
Steve Doell, Oregon Crime Victims United
Jim Eckland, Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision
John Fisher, Oregon District Attorneys Association
Phillip Lemman, Criminal Justice Commission
Judge Michael Marcus - Multnomah County
Bob Grindstaff, Oregon Community Corrections Directors' Association
Sheriff Stan Robson, Oregon State Sheriffs Association
Chief Robert Tardiff, Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police
Lieutenant John Tawney, Oregon State Police
Robin Tomkins, State Commission on Children and Families
Cliff Wamacks, Lincoln County Local Public Safety Coordinating Council

Research Subcommittee
Karen Brazeau, Oregon Youth Authority, Chair
Ben deHaan, Department of Corrections
Steve Doell, Oregon Crime Victims United
Stephen Gibbons, Department of Higher Education
Phillip Lemman, Criminal Justice Commission
Suzanne Porter, Office of Economic Analysis
Lieutenant John Tawney, Department of State Police

Decision Support Subcommittee
Lieutenant John Tawney, Department of State Police, Chair
Karen Brazeau, Oregon Youth Authority
Clark Campbell, OADAP Information Systems
Barbara Cimaglio, Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs
Steve Doell, Oregon Crime Victims United
Judge Michael Marcus, Multnomah County
Stephen Gibbons, Department of Higher Education
Bob Grindstaff, Oregon Community Corrections Directors' Association
Phillip Lemman, Criminal Justice Commission
Suzanne Porter, Office of Economic Analysis
Glenn Riley, Department of Corrections
Chief Robert Tardiff, Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police
Cliff Wamacks, Lincoln County Local Public Safety Coordinating Council

APPENDIX D -- Budget (not included - available on request)

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