AURORA, Colo. — 
On March 31st and April 1st, members of the Crime and Justice Institute coordinated and facilitated the Fourth Annual Institutional Corrections Research Network (ICRN)/National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) data providers meeting.
Sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Kristy Danford, Dave Parilla, Melissa Haynes, Christine Cole, and Meghan Guevara traveled to the National Corrections Academy in Aurora, Colorado and set the stage for lively discussion, engaging presentations on federal and state research, and networking for 80 federal and state correctional research staff. This year’s meeting theme was “Using Data to Inform State Policy.”
This theme included the analysis of changes (legislative or otherwise) in correctional policies and practices, leveraging existing data to answer new questions posed by legislators, developing instruments to best capture the effects of policies, innovative uses of non-correctional data to answer correctional policy questions, and any other topic that fits under that theme.
Meeting highlights included a keynote address from Dr. Ryken Grattet of the University of California – Davis on California’s realignment and the opportunities and challenges of generating the kind of data that are necessary for evaluating performance and planning in corrections. Additionally, participants had the opportunity to sit in on plenaries focusing on moving from policy to action, recidivism, and special offender populations.
This is the fourth conference that CJI has facilitated in cooperation with NIC and BJS. The feedback on these meetings has consistently been positive; one participant this year said:
“The topics discussed and the networking opportunities were excellent. It was beneficial to see how other jurisdictions handle challenges similar to the ones we face daily.”