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Providing Community Information & Notification

Information collected to deter and prevent crime on offenders in the criminal justice system, can also be shared with a community to enhance awareness, promote public safety, and assist crime victims in exercising their right to information and notification. The IJIS Institute is directly involved in two such projects to share this critical information.

Statewide Automated Victim Information & Notification (SAVIN)

In October 2004 President Bush signed the Justice for All Act, which provides crime victims with the right to receive notice of events affecting their offender and their offender’s case. There are more than 32,000 laws and some state constitutional amendments that secure crime victim access to notifications. In FY 2005, Congress approved funding to create the SAVIN program which is administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). The SAVIN program has been instrumental in helping 33 state governments comply with victim notification rights. Victim notification programs empower crime victims with information they can use to protect themselves while also encouraging their full participation in the criminal justice process.

A SAVIN program is not a particular service provider system application; rather, it is a network of solutions and activities that embody the planning, governance, administration, technology, implementation, execution, and ongoing management of victim information and notification services. State law enforcement, court, correctional, treatment, technology, prevention, and victim advocate or service communities must all share information and work in a coordinated fashion to meet the need for timely, confidential, and accurate offender and case status information sharing with crime victims and their families. The BJA partners with the IJIS Institute to join SAVIN provider communities, industry, and crime victims and advocates together to advance efficient and effective solutions.

In support of SAVIN, the IJIS Institute:

Manages the BJA SAVIN Advisory Committee
Developed the SAVIN Guidelines & Standards document
Managed the 2007 and 2008 National SAVIN Conferences
Is currently building a SAVIN provider online community

pdf icon SAVIN Guidelines and Standards (2006.10.16)

FY2010 SAVIN Grants Webinar
SAVIN (Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification) programs provide registered victims with timely and accurate information about any changes to the status of offenders. The FY2010 SAVIN Grants Webinar was an effort by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to provide some additional grant-related guidance and insight to the state and local government practitioners that run SAVIN systems. The primary goal was to improve the quality of competitive applications by ensuring that all potential grant applicants had a thorough understanding of the components and requirements of the FY2010 Competitive Grant Announcement for SAVIN. The webinar was facilitated by the IJIS Institute and delivered by two BJA staff members, Michael Dever, Policy Advisor and Shauna Connolly, State Policy Advisor.

View the webinar (requires RealPlayer or Windows Media Player) or view the slides from the presentation.

For more information about the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s SAVIN program, the webinar, or the grant solicitation, please contact:

Alissa Huntoon, Policy Advisor
202.305.1661
Alissa.Huntoon@usdoj.gov

Shauna Connolly, State Policy Advisor
202.353.0019
Shauna.Connolly@usdoj.gov

Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Web Site

The U.S. Congress has enacted a number of laws to provide concerned citizens with information about convicted sex offenders. In 1994 the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Act required implementation of a sex-offender registration program in each state, and the 1996 Megan’s Law addition called for states to conduct community notification of released sex offenders. Most recently, the 2006 Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was signed to define specific national solutions to avoid “lost” offenders and to provide additional offender information.

The IJIS Institute and Institute for Intergovernmental Research (IIR) were pivotal in designing and implementing the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPR) which is a cooperative effort between state agencies and a nationally-hosted Web site. The Web site was developed using the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) as a standard to link existing state and territory public sex offender registries. The Web site enables individuals around the country to conduct online searches for information on convicted sex offenders from every state, not just their own.

In December 2008, the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) renamed the NSOPR as the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Web site (NSOPW). Read the OJP press release.

This Web site is funded in whole or in part through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this Web site (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided).

Amid predictions it would take years and millions of dollars to create a National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPR), 22 state sex offender registries were connected through a single Web site in only 60 days! Within a year, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico were connected. The project wound up costing less than $1 million, as opposed to some projections that it would cost as much as $25 million.

Three IJIS Institute member companies—Appriss, Unisys, and Booz Allen Hamilton—as well as representatives from state agencies, the Mary Byron Foundation, and Justice Solutions, volunteer their time to participate in the SAVIN Advisory Committee.

In the first 48 hours after NSOPR was made available to the public, there were 27 million hits. As of May 2008, the registry has received more than 1.8 billion hits from more than 14 million visitors.