JJPSD displaying geographic search results (left) service detail page (right).
Azavea developed the Juvenile Justice Program and Services Directory, a GIS web-based database, enabling the collection, management, and searching of data related to youth programs offered by law enforcement agencies.
Client: International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)
Challenge: Law enforcement agencies across the United States develop and maintain a variety of programs and services addressed toward serving youth in their communities. The International Association of Chiefs of Police sought to develop a website that would serve as a single repository for information about all those programs. The website needed to provide both public search capabilities and access to program details, as well as a secure interface that would allow law enforcement agencies to manage data about the services. The IACP also required a geographic search component that enabled users to locate programs based on proximity to an address or Zip code.
Solution: Azavea created the IACP Juvenile Justice Program and Services Directory (JJPSD) database to serve as both a public portal to youth program information and a data management tool for law enforcement agencies. JJPSD provides members of law enforcement agencies with an online survey to complete regarding their youth programs. Users can save partially completed surveys and later return to the site to add or update existing records. Using Open Layers and Microsoft Bing maps, Azavea enabled the database to be searched geographically as well as by other criteria including keyword, agency name, or agency size. The website also provides news articles and stories on featured services.
Outcomes: The Juvenile Justice Program and Services Directory provides law enforcement agents and the general public with access to an abundance of information related to the youth services and programs offered by over 15,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. While contributions to the GIS-based website are limited to the agencies, the public can search the site using geographic as well as other search criteria to find a program that meets their needs along with contact information for that agency. To allow for greater use and distribution of the data collected through the JJPSD surveys, the contents of the system can be downloaded into various file formats such as Access, Excel, or CSV for further analysis.