Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics (2009) / Chapter Skim
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2 Measurement in the Justice System
2 Measurement in the Justice System
Pages 47-74
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From page 47... ...
The complication, of course, is that the "criminal justice system" is not a simple construct. Defining all the parts of a "criminal justice system" is difficult, much less organizing coherent techniques to measure aspects of said system, and different conceptual approaches lead to starkly different vantages of the system.
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From page 48... ...
justice statistics -- and BJS's statistical coverage in particular -- which we describe in Section 2–C; these include difficulty in addressing new and emerging types of crime and contextual factors that apply to a wide range of criminal activities. 2–A THE "FUNNEL" MODEL OF FLOWS IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM Many date the emergence of criminal justice research on the public scene with the release of the 1967 report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society.
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From page 49... ...
Moving from "crime" through the many paths by which accused persons might eventually progress "out of system," this chart illustrated some of the report's main points. One was that the major institutions that make up the criminal justice system -- the police, the courts, and corrections -- are interdependent (President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967:7)
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From page 50... ...
50 Figure 2-1 Sequence of events in the criminal justice system SOURCES: Adapted from President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967:8–9) in 1997; posted at http://www.ojp.
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From page 51... ...
Reflecting continued concern about the fairness issues raised by the commission, we examine the utility of the data for assessing the distribution of the outcomes of these decisions, decisions that constitute "justice" for those who are subject to them. 2–B BJS DATA COLLECTIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM For the panel's benefit, BJS staff provided a listing of its varied data collections, indicating their approximate coverage of various steps relative to a stylized version of the crime sequence model (Figure 2-1)
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From page 52... ...
52 Figure 2-2 Mapping of Bureau of Justice Statistics data series to sequence of events in the criminal justice system SOURCE: Adapted from chart provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to the panel for its first meeting, February 2, 2007.
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From page 53... ...
. 2–C GAPS IN THE COVERAGE OF CRIME AND JUSTICE STATISTICS Study and comparison of the "funnel" model of flows through the criminal justice system (Figure 2-1)
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From page 54... ...
criminal histories maintained by law enforcement and accelerated adoption of new standards for rap sheets; 6. Information on the characteristics of "frequent fliers" who are incar cerated in local jails on a repeated basis;
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From page 55... ...
A third gap is that contextual factors associated with crime are inherently difficult to describe -- and even characterize consistently -- at all steps in the criminal justice system; we describe the relation of drugs and crime as an example. A fourth major gap that is plainly apparent from a comparison of Figure 2-2 with the general framework of Figure 2-1 is the processing of juvenile offenders and victims.
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From page 56... ...
Yet both the UCR and the NCVS -- the nation's two principal indicators of crime -- have been critiqued for being slow to catch up to new crime types. A report of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division (Barnett, 2000:2)
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From page 57... ...
Amidst its recent major change in strategic priorities to the deterrence of terrorism, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (2004a) prominently included a white-collar crime plank in its strategic goals for 2004–2009: IIH.1 Reduce levels of corporate fraud by targeting those groups or in dividuals engaged in major corporate fraud schemes that signifi cantly impact the investing public and financial markets.
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From page 58... ...
Broadening the search to include "OJP and NCJRS" -- BJS's parent Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the OJP–sponsored National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
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From page 59... ...
between BJS and NW3C, such as BJS maintains with the National Center for State Courts and the Urban Institute's Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center. In fairness to BJS, there are at least three major reasons that partially explain the dearth of information on white-collar crime: • The definitional problems involved in even conceptualizing a data col lection program in white-collar crime are immense, and are more than a small agency with limited resources -- already grappling with massive and ill-defined data collection areas such as adjudication -- can reason ably take on.
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From page 60... ...
: Authority of any entity established under this chapter shall extend to civil justice matters only to the extent that such civil justice matters bear directly and substantially upon criminal justice matters or are inextrica bly intertwined with criminal justice matters. The Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, administered every 4–5 years since 1992, has most recently been conducted by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC)
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From page 61... ...
BJS staff also deserve credit for, arguably, making the civil justice survey one of the agency's most scrutinized and reported data series; BJS has published numerous analyses characterizing verdicts from the data series (Cohen, 2004, 2005a) , the amount of trial awards (Cohen, 2005b)
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From page 62... ...
It should be noted that BJS has produced reports on one particular subset of civil justice cases, making use of data other than the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts. Using the Civil Master File of the Administrative Office of the U.S.
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From page 63... ...
describe results from the State Court Processing Statistics project on juveniles charged with felonies in adult courts. Further, in at least one instance, BJS was explicitly mandated by Congress to conduct a study within juvenile correctional facilities: the data collections requested by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (see Section 5–A.1)
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From page 64... ...
to assist State and local governments in promoting public safety by encouraging accountability for acts of juvenile delinquency; and (3) to assist State and local governments in addressing juvenile crime through the provision of technical assistance, research, training, evaluation, and the dissemination of information on effective pro grams for combating juvenile delinquency.
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From page 65... ...
These data are used to provide national portraits of juvenile offenders and juvenile court activity, including information on court caseloads, variation in delinquency cases by demographic characteristics of youth involved, detention, disposition of cases, and the flow of cases through the juvenile justice system. Status offense cases are also considered, but to a lesser degree, and juveniles waived to adult courts are not followed beyond the waiver decision.
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From page 66... ...
, as well as incidents of criminal victimization. In addition to its own sponsored data sets, OJJDP's Statistical Briefing Book compiles information from a wide variety of agencies and organizations to permit assessments of juvenile victimization, offending, and law enforcement experiences.
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From page 67... ...
BJS gives attention to this group, but these data are not linked with the records from juvenile courts and facilities. Consequently, meaningful assessments of which types of youth are handled in the juvenile justice versus the criminal justice system are not readily available.
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From page 68... ...
Those data resources that do cover aspects of drug use and drug-related criminal and violent behavior include both probability surveys and recordsbased series, and each has unique strengths and weaknesses. A partial list of these resources -- past and present, conveying the range of data collections that have touched on drug-related issues -- includes the following: • The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH; formerly the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse)
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From page 69... ...
However, the reliability of these data for economic and policy analyses -- for instance, how closely the prices paid in the transactions logged by undercover federal agents track with prices in the broader illegal drug market, and the degree to which they represent federal (DEA) interdiction priorities rather than local-level activities -- was ruled to be inadequate by the National Research Council (2001a)
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From page 70... ...
. Still, in a section of BJS's strategic plan that briefly itemizes data collections under major section headings, the section on drug crime statistics notes only that "many ongoing BJS statistical series collect and analyze data on drugs and crime" (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005a:Fig.
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From page 71... ...
The broad area of civil justice proceedings -- distinct from criminal justice -- is rep resented by one principal data series in BJS's extensive portfolio, and is limited by its construction to cover only completed court cases (and not out-of-court settlements)
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From page 72... ...
A fuller assessment of the quality and coverage of data that may be available in school or juvenile facility records would have to accompany expanded data collections on the juvenile population. To be clear, these conceptual and operational complexities are only one part of the difficulty in suggesting that new data collections be developed to 7 These agencies include, at a minimum, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal De posit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the National Credit Union Administration, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the U.S.
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From page 73... ...
BJS's Drugs & Crime Facts is a first step toward such an accounting, as is the compilation of data from a wider variety of sources in the online Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. Still, these gap areas would benefit from a more analytical approach and more complete exploration of existing data sets (and their limitations)
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From page 74... ...
Department of Justice should be fully engaged: Recommendation 2.2: In line with its original charge and to better document and understand the contribution of juveniles to street crime and violence, the victimization of youth, and the consequences for youth and society of their victimization and offending, BJS should develop juvenile victimization, crime, and justice statistical series suitable for describing the patterns of offending and victimization of youth, longitudinal progression of youth through the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and reentry into the community and criminal system. Taking on this responsibility would require additional resources.
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