The oregon statistical analysis center (SAC), which is housed at the criminal justice commission, proposes two projects in its 2024 state justice statistics grant application

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) awarded a $175,017 Cooperative Agreement under the State Justice Statistics Program for Statistical Analysis Centers (CFDA 16.550) to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) for two projects. First, the CJC will analyze and report on long-range misdemeanor conviction trends in Oregon, entitled "Oregon Misdemeanor Conviction Trends," to be released by the end of 2025. Second, the CJC will conduct an analysis to examine the initial impact of newly funded deflection programs on arrests, charges, and convictions for drug possession offenses at the county level, in a project titled "Impact of Deflection Programs on Drug Enforcement Misdemeanor Criminal Cases." This project will improve Oregon's understanding of the impact of policy decisions on criminal justice outcomes and contribute to overcoming challenges with consistent drug possession outcome data. The CJC, as the State Administering Agency, will publish the findings from both projects on its website to provide data and trend analysis to criminal justice stakeholders, legislators, and the public.

First, for its 2024 core-capacity building project, the SAC requests funding for activities that are closely aligned with the 2023 core-capacity building project area increasing access to statistical data. In brief, the oregon SAC proposes using SJS 2024 core-capacity building grant funds to analyze and report on the long-range misdemeanor conviction trends in the state. Entitled oregon misdemeanor conviction trends, this proposed project is timely, as IT will correspond with the states need to collect and share information that informs policy decisions and impacts of misdemeanor charge and conviction trends. The oregon SAC will release the oregon misdemeanor convictions trends report by end of 2025. Second, the SAC proposes using funds for a special-emphasis project to conduct an analysis to examine the initial impact of newly funded deflection programs at the county level. This will provide county level results to show the magnitude impact to arrests, charges, and convictions for drug enforcement misdemeanors of drug possession offenses. In addition, the project will further expand the capacity of the oregon SAC to compile, analyze, and report on initial deflection program outcomes. This SJS 2024 project entitled, impact of deflection programs on drug enforcement misdemeanor criminal cases will provide relevant and timely outcome analyses for individuals with criminal justice system contact for user amounts of controlled substances. Further, criminal justice leaders recognize that the impact of newly formed deflection programs are an important and previously understudied area of concern in oregon. Importantly, this project will improve the states understanding of the impact of policy decisions on criminal justice outcomes. This project also meets BJS national priorities and will contribute to overcoming the challenges of consistent, useful, and relevant drug possession outcome data. Finally, the proposed project will produce a publication detailing the impact of deflection programs on criminal justice outcomes at the county level. The publication will be made publicly available on the CJC website and will provide data and trend analysis to criminal justice stakeholders, legislators, and the public.