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CROSS FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMIC TREND MAPPING IN CORRECTIONS: Correctional Operational Trend Analysis System (COTAS)

Award Information

Awardee
Florida Department of Corrections
Award #
2006-IJ-CX-K007
Funding Category
Continuation
Location

Tallahassee, FL

Congressional District
2
Status
Closed
Funding First Awarded
2006
Total funding (to date)
$1,022,070
Original Solicitation
NIJ FY06 Corrections Technology Solicitation: Invited Full Applications

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2006, $500,000)

The proposed project will develop software that will enhance existing 'crime mapping' tools to ensure long-term public, staff and inmate safety and security in correctional environment. COTAS merges information and technology into a web-based system using an innovative graphical user interface, crime mapping/GIS technology, and statistical trend analysis for correctional administrators.

The FDC will analyze data to determine which variables are indicators of institutional health, including violent misconduct and disorder. Using hierarchical linear modeling and a split-half cross-validation sample, the research team will analyze five years worth of data to find significant and substantive indicators of prison violence and disruption. Ultimately this will enable administrators to diagnose the health of an institution at a glance and use this information to prevent disruption and improve safety of the officer and inmate as well as security of the institution.

ca/ncf

The proposed project developed by the Florida Department of Corrections, is a software to create a correctional 'crime mapping' and information management system to monitor cross functionally operations that can be quickly viewed by all levels of correctional management. COTAS would be used to identify trends, patterns, and areas of concerns within specific individual institutions and statewide. Offender Based Information System (OBIS) data from five previous years has been transferred into a data warehouse and cleansed based on designed event predictor relative to disruption and violence. The continuation of funding will create additional significant predictors to further enhance the software capabilities in indicating potential areas of disruption and violence at the institutional, regional, and state level of the agency.

nca/ncf

The proposed project developed by the Florida Department of Corrections, is a software to create a correctional 'crime mapping' and information management system to monitor cross functionally operations that can be quickly viewed by all levels of correctional management. COTAS would be used to identify trends, patterns, and areas of concerns within specific individual institutions and statewide. Offender Based Information System (OBIS) data from five previous years has been transferred into a data warehouse and cleansed based on designed event predictor relative to disruption and violence. The continuation of funding will perform a third-party data validation analysis to determine the accuracy of these predictions. Along with the evaluation of the predictive accuracy of the risk scoring rubric, the researchers will identify alternative methods of calibrating the factors that are currently used to quantify the risk scores. Additionally, analysis will be conducted to determine if additional risk factors should be included in the scoring process.

ca/ncf

The proposed project developed by the Florida Department of Corrections, is a software to create a correctional crime mapping and information management system to monitor cross functionally operations that can be quickly viewed by all levels of correctional management. COTAS would be used to identify trends, patterns, and areas of concerns within specific individual institutions and statewide. Offender Based Information System (OBIS) data from five previous years has been transferred into a data warehouse and cleansed based on designed event predictor relative to disruption and violence. The continuation of funding will perform data validation by a third-party, creation of documentation, and creation of a dissemination packet. The documentation will be provided to the Department staff that uses the COTAS software and it will be included in the dissemination package. The dissemination packet shall include the COTAS software, database architecture and documentation of third-part software requirements to run COTAS. The packet will be given to the National Institute of Justice to disseminate the COTAS software to other agencies.
ca/ncf

This award completes funding for 2006-IJ-CX-K007. This award was competitively made in response to a proposal submitted by the Flordia Department of Corrections (FL DOC) to an NIJ FY2006 solicitation "Institutional Corrections Technology." This award funded development of a tool to analyze crime trends in correctional institutions. With funding provided through this award, FL DOC funded Florida State University (FSU)to conduct a third party validation of this tool. The evaluation by FSU cited several recommendations for improvement. The purpose of this supplemental funding is to enable a reevaluation to determine if those recommendations were adopted, prior to making this tool available to corrections agencies nationwide. nca/ncf

Date Created: September 13, 2006