In early 2009, an Exploratory Committee was formed to investigate the potential creation of a Veterans Court in Maricopa County, Arizona. The Committee’s initial efforts have focused on examining existing Veterans Courts and determining the size and scope of the problem (i.e., the number of veterans in the county jail). This report provides an overview of information on veterans in the Maricopa County Jail System, drawing on data collected by the Arizona Arrestee Reporting Information Network (AARIN). This report is intended to assist the work of the Veterans Court Exploratory Committee.

The purpose of this report is to use data from a sample of recently booked arrestees in Maricopa County to examine the scope and nature of Maricopa County’s gang problem. In particular, this report supplements data presented in the bi-annual report on gangs conducted by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, which relies on official police data and their occasional white paper on gangs that relies on self-report data from school youth. We organized our analyses around six research questions: (1) what proportion of adult arrestees are involved in a gang, and what are the socio-demographic differences between those who are associated with a gang and those who are not; (2) what are the rituals associated with gang joining; (3) how do gang and non-gang arrestees differ in their experiences with crime, drug use and victimization; (4) what is the organizational structure and composition of gangs; (5) how do members socially identify with their gang; and (6) how and why do members leave their gang?

In 2006, the Bureau of Justice Statistics awarded a State Justice Statistics grant to the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission’s Statistical Analysis Center to conduct research on homicide in Arizona. The Center, with assistance from local law enforcement officials, and researchers from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, collected homicide data from the following sources: Supplemental Homicide Reports, law enforcement homicide case files, and autopsy reports. The purpose of this report is to provide a general description of the scope and nature of the homicide problem in Arizona. Specifically, this report examines the general characteristics of victims and offenders, the circumstances surrounding homicide incidents, temporal patterns when homicides occur, and the geographic characteristics where homicides took place.