Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics (2009) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 5-22
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From page 5... ...
The review will examine the ways in which BJS statistics are used by Congress, executive agencies, the courts, state and local agencies, and researchers in order to determine the impact of BJS programs and the means to enhance that impact. The review will assess the organization of BJS and its relationships with other data gathering entities in the Department of Justice, as well as with state and local governments, to determine ways to improve the relevance, quality, and cost-effectiveness of justice statistics.
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From page 6... ...
, BJS was originally created as part of the former Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) ; accordingly, BJS also inherits the LEAA's strong mandate to assist state and local authorities -- both financially and technically -- in developing justice information systems.
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From page 7... ...
Through comparison to the funnel model, we identify four major substantive gaps in BJS's portfolio: • White-collar crime, including various types of fraud, public corrup tion, and Internet crimes; • Civil justice (as opposed to criminal justice) matters -- ranging from prosecution of nonviolent crimes to property disputes to divorce and custody arrangements -- which are currently covered by only a single BJS collection (the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts)
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From page 8... ...
A STRONG POSITION OF INDEPENDENCE Strategic Goal 1: To establish and maintain a strong position of independence as a statistical agency; to serve as an independent and objective source of statistical information on crime and the administration of justice. BJS generally espouses the expected principles and practices of a federal statistical agency, but it has sustained major challenges to its independence as a national statistical resource in recent years.
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From page 9... ...
By these recommendations and the suggested strategic goal statement, we also suggest that preserving a strong position of independence should be BJS's first criterion for undertaking new data collections or revising existing ones. Because of the experience with PREA reporting requirements, we recommend (Recommendation 5.1)
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From page 10... ...
. Continuing and Strengthening State Justice Statistics Program and SAC Partnerships Through its State Justice Statistics program, BJS supports the operation of Statistical Analysis Centers (SACs)
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From page 11... ...
As a vital part of BJS's operations, we urge continued strengthening of the relationship between BJS and its SAC partners: Recommendation 4.1: Through its Statistical Analysis Center and State Justice Statistics programs, BJS should continue to de velop its ties with the states, and more fully exploit the potential for using states as partners in data collections. We further suggest that the experience of BJS's SAC partners be tapped as BJS pursues methodological improvements, including developments toward longitudinal and small-area measurement systems (Recommendation 4.2)
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From page 12... ...
. The BJS-developed mapping of data series to the criminal justice system funnel model is an important first step in this regard; our concern is that the unique characteristics, shared areas of substantive overlap, and interrelationships of BJS's current set of collections are not always immediately clear.
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From page 13... ...
From the purely statistical standpoint, BJS's NCHIP work is ripe for criticism because BJS's role is strictly a moneytransfer operation; although it pays to develop the local databases, BJS has no access to the resulting data for research purposes. Other than generating rough summary statistics of firearm-purchase background checks, BJS has not been able to utilize the criminal history record data that its grant monies help to develop at the state and local levels.
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From page 14... ...
IMPROVING COVERAGE OF THE JUSTICE SYSTEM Strategic Goal 3: To provide comprehensive statistical coverage of all parts of the criminal justice system, including the longi tudinal flow of persons and cases through the system and their return to the community. Through this goal statement, we return to our analysis of the funnel model for the criminal justice system sequence of events and our conclusions from that analysis.
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From page 15... ...
As the mapping of BJS data series to the funnel makes clear, BJS generally has good coverage of all the steps in the criminal justice process but, almost exclusively, this coverage is cross-sectional in nature. BJS's steps in true longitudinal measurement of persons and cases through multiple steps of the criminal justice system have been rare; in large part, this is due to the structural problem that there is no common identifier attached to a person (or case)
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From page 16... ...
should develop juvenile victimization, crime, and justice statistical series suitable for describing the patterns of offending and victimization of youth, as well as studies of the longitudinal progression of youth through the juvenile and criminal justice systems (Recommendation 2.2)
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From page 17... ...
Highend users are well served by BJS's microdata holdings that are available for download through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. Through this goal statement, we encourage still further developments along these lines as BJS works to increase its public profile and its relevance in policy debates, while maintaining the high quality standards it has set for itself.
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From page 18... ...
. More fundamentally, and consistent with the expected principles and practices of a federal statistical agency, we believe that the cultivation of an active and continuous research program is essential to an agency's progress.
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From page 19... ...
The recommendations are generally geared to improvements within BJS's various existing data collections -- for instance, ensuring a high-quality independent measure of crime in the NCVS, emphasizing conceptual frameworks in BJS's adjudication and law enforcement collections, and expanding its corrections series to study prisoner reentry into society. As a panel, we grappled with questions regarding this: How should these improvements be paid for?
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From page 20... ...
Yet it is undeniably important to the public knowledge and the public good; BJS's purview includes topics important to general welfare, spanning the measurement of interpersonal violence, the function and magnitude of law enforcement and corrections, and the operations of the judicial branch of government. The problem is not that there are parts of BJS's legal mandate that are unimportant or unworthy, but that its current resources do not permit it to cover its mandates as effectively as possible.
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From page 21... ...
Although hoping that tight fiscal constraints may be alleviated somewhat in coming years, we cannot assume infinite resources either; we have not interpreted our task as assembling a "wish list" for everything that a justice statistics agency could do, but rather think that out suggestions are a mix of short- and long-term, low- and higher-cost ideas for improving the statistical evidence with which crime and justice policy in the United States is developed. Though we do not explicitly rank BJS's data collections, our suggested strategic goals provide BJS with a set of principles against which its data collection portfolio can be assessed.
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