Delinquency Prevention GIS Initiative: Adding Value for Law Enforcement Agencies

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), through collaboration with various organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), developed and implemented a broadly-focused multi-purpose geographic information system (GIS) called SMART (Socioeconomic Mapping and Resource Topography). During Phase One, IACP worked to enhance SMART's relevance to and utility for law enforcement agencies (LEAs) by improving the integrity of law enforcement data, integrating this data into the system, and helping define the functionality of SMART. SMART recently has been introduced to local, county, and state juvenile justice practitioners and policy makers across the nation, including law enforcement. IACP now seeks Phase Two funding to build on these accomplishments and assist OJJDP building on SMART's strong foundation. IACP proposes the following core objectives during Phase Two: 1) further enhance SMART functionality for LEAs and other end-users; 2) continue to improve the quantity and quality of LEA 'programs and services' data in SMART;
3) increase the contribution of user-provided 'point/event' data uploaded to SMART, provide training, and produce a user guide to assist users in uploading data and meaningfully integrating it into their SMART analyses; 4) further promote the use of SMART by law enforcement agencies across the nation through aggressive dissemination, training, and outreach efforts; 5) promote development of a query functionality within SMART to assist LEAs and other end-users in identifying promising programs and services that address law enforcement youth services/juvenile delinquency missions.

Two types of data will be obtained from law enforcement agencies'Programs and Services Data is structured information about programs and services that individual law enforcement agencies provide to serve youth through education and outreach (e.g., police explorers or child-identification services) as well as delinquency intervention programs (e.g., gang intervention or SHOCAP program partnerships. IACP has developed a survey and data structure to capture the full spectrum of program and service types that law enforcement typically implements with respect to youth/delinquency. In its current configuration, this data is accessible in SMART along side resource data from other (non-law enforcement) sources such as Boys-and-Girls Clubs. Agency Supplied Point Data can be plotted on a map relative to other risk factors and resource data in SMART. These points can reflect any data referenced to a standard street address or street intersection (e.g., information about juvenile arrest locations, residences of known gang member, or household/businesses participating in safe haven programs). Unlike LEA programs and services data (and other community resources in SMART), this data is only viewable in SMART through the account of the user who submitted this data, alleviating privacy and confidentiality concerns that are relevant to juvenile justice related data. NCA/NCF