Jail4cast.com makes jail population forecasting straightforward and manageable for
your jail staff. The list of innovations and advantages this tool offers is substantial:
Affordable. Because costs of the cloud application can be spread
across users, clients pay only a low annual fee for access to Jail4cast.com no matter
how much they use it.
Breakthrough Technology. Jail4cast.com takes full advantage of
Looking Glass Analytics’s private cloud hardware and software infrastructure. Our
hosted system relieve jail IT staff and analysts from having to develop, maintain,
or update local applications, spreadsheets.
Contract Inmates. Inmates for which a jurisdiction is not required
to provide housing by local policy or law (most typically federal, state, or local
“contracted” beds) can be added to forecast totals to evaluate impact on capacity
restrictions.
Control for Outliers in Historical Data. Users can choose to exclude
outliers and aberrations in historical data by clicking on and discounting any particular
monthly data point that would inappropriately bias historical trend calculations.
Convenient. Authenticated users can log into and use Jail4cast.com
from any computer with an internet browser. This makes it easy to review or share
forecast assumptions and results with other stakeholders in person or at meetings.
Disaster Proof. Jail4cast.com is maintained on redundant servers
so that uploaded data and forecast parameters are never at risk of corruption. Nightly
backups and off-site storage ensure that client data will not be lost.
Forecast Flexibility. Different forecast assumptions can be specified
for different time periods. For example, an analyst might specify that for the first
2 years of the forecast, monthly admissions will grow at the same rate as the last
2 years, grow at half that rate for the next two years, then grow only at the at
the rate of the local population thereafter.
Help. There is immediate help available throughout Jail4cast.com
wherever a blue question mark (
)
appears. This contextual help offers instructions and rationale for most actions
Interpretable Results. The mechanics of creating a jail population
forecast in Jail4cast.com are arithmetic in nature, acting on basic jail management
statistics such as admissions, ADP, and ALOS. With the graphs and easy to interpret
parameters, users do not need a degree in statistics to build, understand, maintain,
or explain forecast models.
Multiple Users. Any client may offer access to multiple users.
There are different roles that users may be assigned including Administrator, Analyst,
and Viewer. A significant advantage for using Jail4cast.com is that all users see
or work off of the same underlying data. Spreadsheet forecasts (and their inherent
proclivity to buried errors) are no longer need to be maintained or shared.
Not Required! Consultants. The data used come straight from the
Jail’s data system and the methods employed are straightforward, understandable,
and easy to explain to others. While complex statistical analyses such as time-series
modeling (ARIMA, etc.) may offer a marginal improvement in fit of historical data,
significant expertise is required to specify, run, and evaluate the models, and,
of course, explain the results to decision-makers. Complex statistical models also
must be re-evaluated and recalibrated to take advantage of new data, adding further
to the cost, complexity, and interpretability of such methods.
Not Required! New Hardware or Software. Jail4cast.com is a hosted
application residing on LGAN’s private cloud infrastructure. Users require only
internet access and authorizing credentials (user id and password) to create or
modify forecasts, track actuals, and explore policy impacts on their jail population.
The only action required from the IT side of a jail is to create and deliver a periodic
extract of inmate records that include, at a minimum, dates of inmate admission
and release. Data file delivery and update can be automated or accomplished via
user-initiated manual upload. There is no software installation, development, or
update management required.
Not Required! Spreadsheets. Many jails rely on homegrown spreadsheets
to build forecasts and track results. As spreadsheet analyses grow in sophistication
and complexity - often the case with a jail population forecast - the likelihood
for error compounds. Errors in spreadsheets can be buried for a long time without
being noticed and pointers to data (or pointers to pointers to data) across multiple
and increasing numbers of columns and supporting tables can become a tangled mess
of numbers and formulae and difficult to troubleshoot. At Jail4cast.com, the only
thing that changes is the data coming in. The rest of the calculations and methods
always will occur in a consistent and predictable manner. And, you will never lose
your work because your workstation crashed!
Official Forecasts. Jurisdictions may maintain and share an “Official
Current Forecast” for viewing only by external users with limited access.
Peaking Calculation. Peak populations can be calculated using algorithms
based on data provided or set by the user (e.g. 5%, 10%, etc. above ADP).
Rollups and Detail. Jail4cast.com forecasting methodology hinges
on building separate yet additive forecasts for different correctional population
subgroups. The more subgroups for which forecasts are created, the more flexibility
there is for focused adjustment. Once the desired adjustments (referred to as forecast
assumptions in the application) have been made to each subgroup, the user can “roll
up” the subgroup forecasts into any number of aggregate groupings (e.g. total secure
population, pretrial female felons, etc.)
The free version of Jail4cast.com is limited to 8 predefined subgroups, representing
the intersection of location (secure/non-secure), sex (male/female), and charge
type (misdemeanant/felon). If a proposed policy is most likely to affect securely
housed misdemeanants, forecast adjustments can be targeted to that subgroup. If
a jail analyst notices that the actual jail population is diverging over time from
its forecast, it becomes an indicator that the forecast assumptions should be reviewed.
Training Videos. Anyone can learn the basics of Jail4cast.com simply
by watching a few short training videos.
Rationale: Jail Population Forecasting Requires Flexibility. Forecasting
local jail populations is a notoriously difficult and uncertain exercise. Across
time, local jail populations are vulnerable to myriad local, state, and federal
booking and sentencing policies, case-processing protocols, actual physical capacity,
and other system dynamics few of which jail administrators have much control over.
In fact, a population forecast alone can be the impetus for policy review and system
changes which then impact the size of future jail populations.
Because of the uncertainty and shifting sands of criminal justice policy, jail administrators
and planners are frequently asked to produce and update jail population forecasts.
They also may be asked to estimate the impact of new criminal justice policies on
jail numbers or quantify and explain the divergence from a prior forecast. Recognizing
these responsibilities and limitations, forecasting local jail populations must
be considered an ongoing process in which flexibility and adaptability is paramount.
Jail4cast.com provides such a flexible and adaptable platform.
Rationale: Jail Population Forecasting is for more than New Jail Planning.
Forecasting future inmate populations often arises as a subcomponent of jail capacity
planning studies. However, jail capacity planning can be a very comprehensive exercise,
essentially becoming an analysis of the entire criminal justice system. There may
be times when such a comprehensive study is warranted. However, such efforts are
also expensive, time consuming, and difficult to replicate cost-effectively with
any frequency.
Far more frequently, jail population analysts need to create or update a forecast
cost-effectively and in a short period of time or manipulate an existing forecast
to estimate the impact of new policy initiatives likely to impact all or specific
subgroups of the jail population.
Jail4cast.com provides a platform to meet these needs cost-effectively and flexibly.
Forecasting Methodology. Research suggests that prior trends in
jail admissions, average daily population (ADP), and average length of stay (ALOS),
along with projected changes in the local population (more people equals more crime)
offer a reasonable basis for short-term (1- to 3-year) projections. If the assumption
of relatively stable historical data applies, the past can predict the future. Predictive
statistical models can be created to fit trends in prior ADP, ALOS, admissions and
other data, though consultant expertise is often required if the models are multivariate
or complex in other ways. Technically, as soon as new historical data is available,
models must be recalibrated and re-evaluated - often requiring additional consulting.
Jail4cast.com takes a different approach. Here, the jail population is subdivided
into population subgroups, allowing the analyst to interact with each subgroup visually
and analytically. No statistical modeling expertise is required as users evaluate
and decide what short- and long-term trends or changes will most likely occur. Users
can change the model at any point or at multiple points in the future to accommodate
rational expectations. For example, an analyst can specify that a current rate of
decline in secure pretrial females will level off after 3 years once anticipated
case processing efficiencies have been realized. As with any forecasting effort,
and particularly given the profound impact of policy decisions, input from other
stakeholders in the criminal justice system on future policy impacts should be solicited,
evaluated, and included periodically.