The Jail Profile Survey
The Jail Profile Survey (JPS), conducted since the mid-1970’s, is a data collection instrument that gathers responses from counties on local jurisdiction and county jails. This information provides counties a means of tracking changes in their populations and assessing and projecting program and facility needs. Some items are reported monthly, others quarterly; questionnaires are completed and returned to BSCC for review and public posting via the Jail Profile Survey Online Querying database and Jail Population Trends Dashboard.
JPS Online Query:
The published Jail Profile Survey data are reported by local agencies. Local agencies work hard to submit accurate data, but data collection is not uniform throughout the state. Due to local agency-specific data collection limitations some agencies cannot report all data elements. BSCC screens the data and communicates with reporting agencies to ensure accuracy and completeness, but does not conduct investigations or audits of the data or data collection process. The JPS database is a “live database” and represents point in time data. Previously reported data are regularly updated to reflect any revisions received from local agencies.
Jail Profile Survey-Online Querying opens in a new window (Updated June 14, 2019)
-Looking at the JPS Online Querying, you can select different levels of data.
Facility (Facility-level data collected monthly)
Monthly (Countywide data collected monthly)
Quarterly (Additional countywide data collected quarterly)
-I chose: Monthly, 2002 and forward, 2018, Jan to Dec. Note: For now, just pulling all data for 2018.
-I chose San Luis Obispo County only, but you can also select multiple counties.
-You can sort by date or jurisdiction. You can also select specific variables or all of them — for now, I’m selecting all variables.
-By clicking on Query, it creates a useful table on-screen with all the data – and is really fast. By a quick scan of the results, it has various monthly census, including specific variables for Mental Health – which is key for my project.
-There’s a button named “Excel”, so I’ll click on that to export the data.
-For now, I have enough data to work within Excel (pivot tables, etc) and within Tableau.
Jail Profile Survey-Participants opens in a new window
Jail Population Trends Dashboard opens in a new window
Reference
For additional information, see the Jail Profile Survey Workbook found online at: http://www.bscc.ca.gov/s_fsojailprofilesurvey.php.