Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics (2009) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 23-46
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From page 23... ...
It would combine their infor mation into an integrated picture of crime and criminal justice. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA)
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. BJS data are generally made available in processed spreadsheets on the BJS website or in microdata form at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data hosted by the University of Michigan (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/)
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, detailed concentration on violent felons using State Court Processing Statistics data (Reaves, 2006) , tabulations of citizen complaints regarding police use of force from the Law Enforcement Management and Adminstrative Statistics survey (Hickman, 2006)
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administered by the government.2 The "justice system" that BJS monitors with its data collections is sprawling, including not only correctional facilities and offices but the entire infrastructure of law enforcement: police departments at the state and local levels and their various support bureaus. It also includes the judiciary: the full array of federal and state courts, which vary strongly in organizational structure and information resources.
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INTRODUCTION 27 Figure 1-1 First page of example from BJS "Bulletin" series of data releases legal mandate is such that its work is not limited to the collection and analysis of data; it is also tasked with providing financial assistance to state and local governments for the development and maintenance of information resources such as background check databases. Some of BJS's data collections are performed on a regular basis whereas others are more sporadic (or onetime efforts)
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annual review of statistical program funding, "cost cutting measures applied to the NCVS continue to have significant effects on the precision of the estimates -- year-to-year change estimates are no longer feasible and have been replaced with two-year rolling averages" in BJS reports on victimization. In addition to decreased precision in the NCVS estimates, fiscal constraints and the large NCVS share of the overall budget have raised trade-off decisions in the portfolio of BJS programs: Should some resources currently devoted to the NCVS be applied to collections in other areas such as law enforcement or judicial processing (at the expense of NCVS accuracy)
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, and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data collection costs (1990–2008)
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The panel's recommendations will address ways to improve the impact and cost-effectiveness of the agency's statistics on crime and the criminal justice system. Given the prominence of the NCVS in BJS operations -- and its dominance of BJS budget resources -- the panel was specifically asked to evaluate options for conducting the NCVS in our first year of work before turning
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The first stated purpose of the section of legislation authorizing BJS is "to provide for and encourage the collection and analysis of statistical information concerning crime, juvenile delinquency, and the operation of the criminal justice system and related aspects of the civil justice system" (42 USC § 3731)
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analyze the correlates of crime, civil disputes and juvenile delinquency, by the use of statistical information, about criminal and civil justice systems at the Federal, State, and local levels, and about the extent, distribution and attributes of crime, and juvenile delinquency, in the Nation and at the Federal, State, and local levels; 7. compile, collate, analyze, publish, and disseminate uniform national statistics concerning all aspects of criminal justice and related aspects of civil justice, crime, including crimes against the elderly, juvenile delinquency, criminal offenders, juvenile delinquents, and civil disputes in the various States; 8.
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; 18. provide for the development and enhancement of State and local criminal justice information systems, and the standardization of data reporting relating to the collection, analysis or dissemination of data and statistics about drug offenses, drug related offenses, or drug dependent offenders [Clause added in 1988]
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provide a variety of statistical services for the criminal justice community" (28 CFR § 0.93)
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Currently, the ICSP has 14 members located in 12 cabinet departments or independent agencies. The major statistical agencies represented on the council are: • from the Department of Agriculture, the Economic Research Service and the Na tional Agricultural Statistics Service; • from the Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau; • from the Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics; • from the Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration; • from the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Center for Health Statistics • from the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics; • from the Department of Labor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and • from the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
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It has a staff of 50 people, a budget of about $20 million, less than one-quarter of 1 percent of what we spend at the Federal level for the war on drugs and a miniscule proportion of what we spend as a nation on law enforcement in general. It is no wonder we have such an incomplete understanding of what is going on [in crime]
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subtly connotes a dedication to the furtherance of Department of Justice policy objectives rather than the atmosphere of independence that statistical agencies should be permitted. Indeed, as we describe in more detail later in Section 5–A.2, BJS has endured incidents in which Justice Department policy practices have directly conflicted with statistical agency independence, culminating in a high-profile (and damaging)
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From page 38... ...
databases by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explo sives, as well as operation of a national database of images of bullet and cartridge case evidence related to local crime scenes; • Analysis of the effectiveness of "weed and seed" grants to localities by the Community Capacity Development Office; • Compilation of data on arrests and seizures made by Drug Enforce ment Administration officers; • Population and inventory reports maintained by the Federal Bureau of Prisons; and • Analyses of drug markets by the National Drug Intelligence Center, in cluding fielding of a National Drug Threat Survey to law enforcement agencies. The UCR program -- the record of crimes reported to the police -- is arguably the longest-standing and highest-profile of the department's statistical series.
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is a constituent agency of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) , indicated here by boldface type.
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Second, the administrative tie to OJP means that, like other units in the office, BJS inherits a strong focus of attention on the needs of state and local law enforcement, since OJP is the legal successor of the previous Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. OJP is a program agency that takes as its general mission "provid[ing]
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maintain liaison with public and private educational and research insti tutions, State and local governments, and governments of other nations relating to criminal justice; (5) provide staff support to coordinate the activities of the Office and the Bu reau of Justice Assistance, the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and (6)
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, major units within OJP include: • The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) provides leadership in grant adminis tration and policy development to support state, local, and tribal criminal justice strategies to achieve safe communities.
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Through its State Justice Statistics program, BJS provides grant assistance to a strong network of state Statistical Analysis Centers (SACs) , some of which are colocated with state government or law enforcement agencies and others of which are installed at academic institutions.
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The second caveat is a simpler limitation of space: The wide scope of BJS programs and the magnitude of the task of assessing the whole portfolio preclude us from delving too deeply into the details of any single data series. Pursuant to BJS's requests, we provided a book-length treatment of one series -- the NCVS -- in our interim report.
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Chapter 3 provides a brief inventory of BJS's data collections in the broad topic areas of victimization, law enforcement, corrections, and adjudication. BJS's partnership with the states through its SACs, and its grant programs to state and local governments are outlined in Chapter 4.
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