On Good Authority

              Authority adopts state
criminal justice plan
On Good Authority
Vol. 5, No. 1
July 2001
On Good Authority is a periodic
briefing on trends and issues in
criminal justice program evaluation.
This issue summarizes the Authority’s
Criminal Justice Plan for the State of
Illinois. The full plan can be
downloaded or ordered from the
Authority’s website at
www.icjia.state.il.us, or by contacting
the Research and Analysis Unit.
The Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority is a state
agency dedicated to improving the
administration of criminal justice in
Illinois. The basic functions of the
Authority are criminal justice research,
federal and state grants administration,
and information systems development
and support.
For more information, or for copies of
this or other publications, contact the
Authority at (312) 793-8550, or visit
our website at www.icjia.state.il.us.
The project was supported in part by grant
#99-DB-BX-0017 awarded by the Bureau of
Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs,
U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in
this document do not necessarily represent
the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.
Printed by authority of the State of Illinois, July
2001. Printing order #01-362; 6,500 copies.
George H. Ryan
Governor
Peter B. Bensinger
Chairman
Candice M. Kane
Executive Director
ILLINOIS
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
INFORMATION AUTHORITY
In 1999, the Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority began a new
comprehensive planning process to
help guide the use of the state’s limited
resources in the areas of program
development, research and evaluation,
legislative and policy initiatives, and the
administration of federal grant funds. The
process resulted in the Criminal Justice
Plan for the State of Illinois, which was
unanimously accepted by the Authority at
its June 1, 2001, meeting.
The ongoing planning process is
guided by research, data collection,
professional input, and consultation. A
two-day planning assembly was held in
June 2000. Nearly 150 policymakers,
service providers, researchers, private
citizens, and government officials
participated in the assembly. Following
the assembly, six advisory committees
were formed: Drug and Violent Crime,
Juvenile Crime, Offender Services,
Victims of Crime, Community Capacity
Building, and Information Systems and
Technology. These committees were
convened several times to refine issues
and develop the strategies articulated in
the plan.
The Criminal Justice Plan incorpo-rates
research material gathered during
the planning process and identifies 21
priority issues. It also sets goals and
objectives for each issue, and recom-mends
more than 200 specific action
steps to address them.
The issues identified during the
planning process point to critical needs in
five overarching areas: information,
collaboration, the utilization of resources,
services, and accountability.
INFORMATION
Three types of information needs in
Illinois were viewed as paramount in the
plan. First, basic information about
offenders, victims, and reported crimes is
not readily available. Second, there is a
lack of meaningful information describing
the needs of offenders, victims, and those
who work with them in the criminal
justice system. Finally, information
systems are not integrated at the state
level; consequently, it is impossible to
effectively track offenders between the
arrest, charging, court disposition, and
sentencing stages. The plan identifies the
following information-related issues:
1. The state lacks critical information
about juvenile offenders and the juvenile
justice system.
Efforts to coordinate juvenile justice
services and to make informed decisions
regarding at-risk youth and alleged
delinquent youth are impeded by the
absence of case-level data and a lack of
information sharing between agencies.
Sharing of information would allow
treatment providers to more efficiently
determine the level and type of services
needed by avoiding redundancy of
service and conflicts in treatment ap-proaches.
It also would keep multiple
agencies serving a single juvenile from
having to collect the same information,
and would help prevent children from
falling through the gaps in service
delivery systems.
The Criminal Justice Plan calls for
the gathering of high quality data about
juvenile offenders to improve decision-making
at the individual and policy