---
category: "U.S. Government"
created: 2024-04-26
updated: 2026-10-14
tags:
  - Organization
  - PROMIS
  - INSLAW
  - DC Government
summary: "The Office of Crime Analysis of the District of Columbia was a DC government research unit whose Director, Joan E. Jacoby, co-led the 1969 team that designed PROMIS for the U.S. Attorney's office."
location: "Washington, D.C."
relations:
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Joan E. Jacoby]]"
    role: "director"
    start: 1969
    end: 1972
    reverse: true
    fn: 4
---
The Office of Crime Analysis of the District of Columbia was a small governmental research and analysis unit operating within the DC government. It had no federal counterpart and appears to have operated primarily to support criminal justice planning and prosecution management for the District.

### Role in PROMIS Development

In 1969, the office administered the $60,000 LEAA grant (70-DF-047) to [[Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co]] that funded the design of the original [[PROMIS|Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS)]] for the [[U.S. Attorney's office|DC U.S. Attorney's Office]]. [[Joan E. Jacoby]], then Director of the office, co-directed the design team alongside [[Charles R. Work]] (Deputy Director of the Superior Court Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office), with [[Bill Hamilton]] of Peat Marwick serving as project manager.[^1] A May 1971 system overview prepared for the office under LEAA Grant No. 70-DF-047 states that the design team "was headed by Mrs. Joan E. Jacoby, Director of the Office of Crime Analysis," and that the system became operational on January 1, 1971.[^3]

The office described PROMIS as the critical component of its own Project TRACE (Tracking, Retrieval and Analysis of Criminal Events), an offender-tracking system from arrest through sentencing and incarceration, and the LEAA funded both TRACE and PROMIS.[^3] The case evaluation systems used in PROMIS were developed by the office for the U.S. Attorney's office in 1969.[^4]

Jacoby is listed as director on the office's 1972 *Final Report: Project TRACE*.[^4] She subsequently became the first Executive Director of the [[National Center for Prosecution Management]], a nonprofit established with LEAA funding through a grant to the [[National District Attorneys Association]] to provide technical assistance to prosecutors nationwide.[^2][^5]

### Footnotes

[^1]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report.* House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992.
[^2]: Office of Justice Programs, National Criminal Justice Reference Service. "The Prosecutor's Charging Decision: A Policy Perspective." OJP Publication No. 35832. ojp.gov.
[^3]: Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., *System Overview and Report Formats for PROMIS* (May 1971), prepared for the District of Columbia Government Office of Crime Analysis under LEAA Grant No. 70-DF-047, NCJ 32469, title page, abstract, introduction and note 1 to the design team passage. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/32469NCJRS.pdf
[^4]: Jacoby, Joan E., *The Prosecutor's Charging Decision: A Policy Perspective* (January 1977), note 1 to the chapter on case evaluation systems and bibliography (*Final Report: Project TRACE*, Joan Jacoby, Director, Office of Crime Analysis, Government of the District of Columbia, 1972), NCJ 35832. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/35832NCJRS.pdf
[^5]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee No. 5, *Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Hearings*, Serial No. 4 (1973), statement of Patrick F. Healy, April 4, 1973, identifying Joan E. Jacoby as now the executive director of the National Center for Prosecution Management. https://archive.org/details/lawenforcementas00unit