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Cross-Tracking System | State & County Correctional Populations

This dashboard empowers members of the public for the first time to see organized aggregated data about state and county correctional facilities.

Table of Contents

Introduction

As part of the 2018 law signed by the Governor, Criminal Justice Reform (CJR) requires the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS), in consultation with the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS), to create a standardized data collection and cross-tracking system for criminal justice agencies and the Trial Court. To provide meaningful access to the data, this Cross-Tracking Dashboard empowers members of the public for the first time to see organized aggregated data, download datasets for independent study, and deepen their understanding of the Commonwealth’s criminal justice system.  

The charts below integrate a growing body of more than 9 million records from the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) and the Commonwealth's 14 County Sheriff’s Offices. Integrating the records dating back to January 2017 required project leaders to agree on a governance framework, cross-agency data-sharing practices, and establish common data definitions across criminal justice custodial agencies. That important process culminated in regulations, which include important definitions and context behind the information below. You can access the full regulations and key definitions here.

In addition to custodial agencies, several agencies contributed to the Cross-Tracking System, including: the Trial Court and Massachusetts Probation Service, as well as the Massachusetts State Police. Independent experts from the Justice Reinvestment Policy Oversight Board and numerous criminal justice advocacy groups provided valuable insight and guidance as well. Comprehensive data from the Trial Court and Probation will be added to this tool as the system develops. To facilitate data contributed by the Trial Court, EOPSS and the Trial Court entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, as referenced in the regulations. That can be accessed here Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Data Sharing between EOPSS and the Trial Court.

Recognizing the opportunity to share meaningful data throughout the development process, EOPSS developed a phased approach to fully achieve the mandate of CJR and provide meaningful information to the public. With the finalized regulations and consolidated correctional data from the Sheriffs’ Offices and the Department of Correction, the project leaders worked to publish the Cross-Tracking Dashboard you see below.

With a target completion of late 2023, users can expect to see comprehensive criminal justice data provided by the Trial Court, Probation, Parole, state and local police departments (e.g., dispositions, offenses, demographics and recidivism). The system will also display current information (rather than snapshots), statutory data about governing offenses (i.e., date, time, location), and admission/release dates, etc.

When fully achieved, the Cross-Tracking System will provide quality, standardized data to all agencies improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Equally important, the Cross-Tracking Dashboard will provide anonymized and comprehensive data on the criminal justice populations to the public and any interested party.

About the Information Displayed Below

The dashboards present snapshots of the Massachusetts Criminal Offender population of the DOC and the Sheriffs’ Offices from 2017 through the present on the first day of any individual month. The dashboards empower users to distinguish between pre-trial and sentenced populations and visualize demographic subsets by sex, race-ethnicity, and age.

The data displayed in these charts stems from several systems across the contributing partners, including:

  • The DOC Inmate Management System (IMS)
  • The County Sheriffs’ 12 independent Offender Management Systems (OMS) and Hampden County’s Jail Management System (JMS)

Given that data submitted by the participating criminal justice agencies predates the CJR data reporting standards outlined in the new governing regulations, EOPSS has taken great care to standardize values as needed. The most common example of standardization is the consolidation of dozens of demographic classifications used by different agencies into a more concise and standardized list. To standardize data collection moving forward, EOPSS and the custodial agencies worked together to create Data Collection Policies and Procedures for Custodial Booking and Admission.

As a user, you can hover over any data point to see more detailed information and view different snapshot years or months to see how the populations change over time. Additionally, users can select different Sheriffs’ Offices to view data specific to that office. You can also download the data behind any visualization through a link at the bottom of each display.

For more information about the dashboard, you can access FAQs here.

For any other questions, please write to CJ360help@mass.gov

State and County Populations

Percent Population in the custody of the Department of Correction and County Sheriffs' Offices on yearly basis from 2017-2024. Includes the pre-trial and sentenced populations. Download the data

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chart below shows the total number of people in the care of state and county correctional facilities on the first day of each month from 2017 – 2024 (pre-trial and sentenced as defined in section 2).

Population in the custody of the Department of Correction and County Sheriffs' Offices on a monthly basis for the years 2017-2024. Includes the pre-trial and sentenced populations. Data won't be displayed for future months. An Offender can be under the jurisdiction of one agency while in the custody of another.  The offender will be counted in the snapshot count of the custodial agency.  Due to business and operational processes historical counts may be subject to change. Download the data

Total offender population in the custody of the Department of Correction and County Sheriffs' Offices by month and by year from 2017-2024. Includes the pre-trial and sentenced populations. Data won't be displayed for future months. Download the data

Pre-Trial and Sentenced Populations

For the purpose of this data, individuals living in correctional facilities are classified as either sentenced or pre-trial. Sentenced refers to individuals who are criminally sentenced by a judge after pleading guilty or found guilty of a criminal offense and committed to a period of incarceration, whether directly or after a violation of probation or parole. Pre-trial refers to those individuals who are in custody and have been charged with a crime but whose cases have not yet been adjudicated. The charts below show the distribution of the two groups within the state and county populations.

Pre-trial and sentenced populations under the custody of the Department of Correction and County Sheriffs' Offices. See snapshot data on the 1st of selected month for the years 2017-2024. Data won't be displayed for future months.  Download the data

Pre-trial and sentenced populations under the custody of the Department of Correction and County Sheriffs' Offices. See snapshot data on the 1st of every month for a selected year (2017-2024). An Offender can be under the jurisdiction of one agency while in the custody of another.  The offender will be counted in the snapshot count of the custodial agency.  Due to business and operational processes historical counts may be subject to change. Download the data

Pre-trial and sentenced offender populations under the custody of the County Sheriffs' Offices. See snapshot data on the 1st of selected month of a particular year. Data won't be displayed for future months. An Offender can be under the jurisdiction of one agency while in the custody of another.  The offender will be counted in the snapshot count of the custodial agency.  Due to business and operational processes historical counts may be subject to change. Download the data

Pre-trial and sentenced offender populations under the custody of the County Sheriffs' Offices. See snapshot data on January 1 for the years 2017-2024. Filter to see the data for a specific Sheriff’s Office. An Offender can be under the jurisdiction of one agency while in the custody of another.  The offender will be counted in the snapshot count of the custodial agency.  Due to business and operational processes historical counts may be subject to change. Download the data

State and County Populations by Demographics

CJR requires reporting by certain demographic characteristics, including race-ethnicity, sex, and age. This information is available for each snapshot (2017 through 2024) of state and individual county agencies and is distinguishable by sentenced and pre-trial offender status.

Offender populations by race-ethnicity, sex at birth, and age on the selected snapshot date. Data won't be displayed for future months. An Offender can be under the jurisdiction of one agency while in the custody of another.  The offender will be counted in the snapshot count of the custodial agency.  Due to business and operational processes historical counts may be subject to change. Download the data 

“Offender population by race-ethnicity and criminal justice agency” offers two different views of the population of each criminal justice agency by race/ethnicity.  

First, you can view the count of offenders by race-ethnicity housed in each agency on the selected date.  You can also select to view the data for just male or only female offenders. You should note that some agencies house only male offenders. You can also choose to view just pre-trial or sentenced offenders.

 

Populations by criminal justice agency and race-ethnicity. View raw counts or counts adjusted by the state or county population. Data won't be displayed for future months. An Offender can be under the jurisdiction of one agency while in the custody of another.  The offender will be counted in the snapshot count of the custodial agency.  Due to business and operational processes historical counts may be subject to change. Download the data

Incarceration rates compare the number of offenders in custody to Massachusetts' total population as well as the population of the offender's race-ethnicity demographic group. Each total population figure used in the calculation is estimated with information from the U.S. Census Bureau. For purposes of this analysis, population data for persons ages 18 and over were used.  

Here is an example calculation for this analysis: if there were 4,700 non-Hispanic white offenders incarcerated on a particular date and a population of non-Hispanic whites in Massachusetts of 4,000,000 the incarceration rate was estimated to be 117.5 per 100,000 persons.

Admissions and Releases

The following dashboards display the total admission and release counts per year, distinguishable by criminal justice agency and by admission/release type; and the admission/release trends distinguishable by criminal justice agency and by month, respectively.  For reference, the definitions for each displayed admission or release type are available here.

Admission and Release Event counts across the Department of Correction and County Sheriffs' Offices.  May filter by agency and/or a subset of different event types. Download the data

Two types of trends to analyze from this dashboard:

1. Yearly Trend: Select any one Year from the year filter and Select All the months from the Month filter to view the yearly Trend for the selected year. 

2. Seasonality Trend: Select All the Years from the Year filter and select any one month to view the Monthly trends through all the years.  Download the data

Downloads

Revision History

Details  Date
Updated On 01/02/2024
Published On 08/11/2022

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