$1
Million Grant for Offender Tracking
On
behalf of Gov. Mark Schweiker, Community and Economic Development
Secretary Sam McCullough announced a $1 million community-development
grant to Penn to create an offender tracking system that will
provide law enforcement with timely and accurate risk assessments
of offenders after they are released from prison.
"The
safety and security of Pennsylvanians is Gov. Schweiker's top
priority," Mr. McCullough said. "One way to ensure the
safety of our citizens is to provide law enforcement with the
tools they need to track offenders after they are released back
into the community. By doing so, we can provide them with the
necessary outreach and social services they need to adjust to
their new environment and can protect the community by monitoring
high-priority cases.
"Thanks
to this new technology managed by the Lee Center of Criminology
at the University of Pennsylvania, we can move our current, inefficient
paper tracking system to a computerized system that will be more
reliable and accessible."
"This
grant will allow Penn to develop crime-fighting partnerships with
a wide range of organizations, "said Lawrence W. Sherman,
director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology. "Using the
best research and analytic tools available, we can test new strategies
for helping ex-offenders to lead law-abiding lives."
This
project seeks to create a unified offender tracking system for
outreach to offenders by merging data obtained from the State
Police, the PA Department of Corrections, the FBI and the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration. By becoming a designated agent
of all the law-enforcement agencies for confidential processing
of data, the Lee Center of Criminology can provide the entire
system with information that would include a list of the most
likely and most serious repeat offenders who require preventive
action. Social-service and law-enforcement agencies will review
the success or failure of prior efforts to prevent repeat offending
by people identified for intensive action. With a weekly update
of the highest-risk offenders, a city can mobilize a wide range
of organizations to prevent crime.
The grant
is funded through the Community Revitalization Program, which
supports local initiatives to improve and enhance communities
and their local economies.