Violent Offender Data To Be Studied In Cuyahoga County

CLEVELAND — The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office was awarded a $360,000 grant this week. The money will go to the office's crime strategies unit to enhance data collection and to prioritize prosecution of the area's most violent offenders.

“This effort will be a crucial component in helping law enforcement agencies reduce the most serious offenses that occur within our communities,” said Prosecutor Michael O’Malley. “We are excited to begin this project and look forward to working with our partners throughout the county.”

Between October 2019 and September 2021, the funding will be used to improve the unit's data collection efforts related to violent offenders. Examples of targeted data include the age of the offenders and victims, time of the incidents, types of crimes, names of offenders, case narratives, geographical information and more.

The prosecutor's office will partner with the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.

Once the data is collated, it will be used to prioritize investigations and cases and information will be shared with law enforcement agencies throughout Cuyahoga County. The hope is the pooled data will help law enforcement analyze crime trends and identify where a crime is most likely to occur.

“The goal here is to reduce some of the most violent criminal offenses in Cuyahoga County,” said Rachel Lovell, Case Western's lead researcher on the grant. “We’ve been working with the prosecutor’s office for almost five years. We’ve got a great working relationship with the County as a community partner. This initiative is a good fit for our research team.”

Cuyahoga County has more than 50 police municipalities, numerous law enforcement agencies and a need to share information across city lines and between departments. With this funding, the prosecutor's office will host webinars and create tool kits to aid law enforcement and violence prevention researchers.