FOR STATES: The NICS Improvement Act has provisions that require states to meet specified goals for completeness of the records submitted to the Attorney General on individuals prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms. The records covered include automated information needed by the NICS to identify felony convictions, felony indictments, fugitives from justice, drug arrests and convictions, federally prohibiting mental health adjudications and commitments, domestic violence protection orders, and misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence.
The Act provides for a number of incentives for states to meet the goals it sets for greater record completeness.
-- First, the Act allows states to obtain a waiver, beginning in 2011, of the National Criminal History Record Improvement Program's (NCHIP) state matching requirement, if a state provides at least 90 percent of its records identifying the specified prohibited persons.
-- Second, the Act authorizes grant programs to be administered consistent with NCHIP, for state executive and judicial agencies to establish and upgrade information automation and identification technologies for timely submission of final criminal record dispositions and other information relevant to NICS checks. Up to 5 percent of the grants may be reserved for Indian tribal governments and judicial systems. For Fiscal Year 2009, $10 million has been appropriated.
-- Finally, the Act provides for discretionary and mandatory Byrne grant penalties for non-compliance with record completeness requirements: after 3 years, 3 percent may be withheld in the case of less than 50 percent completeness; after 5 years, 4 percent may be withheld in the case of less than 70 percent completeness; and after 10 years, 5 percent shall be withheld in the case of less than 90 percent completeness (although the mandatory reduction can be waived if there is substantial evidence of the state making a reasonable effort to comply).
IN THE FEDERAL SYSTEM: The NICS Improvement Act creates an independent statutory obligation for federal agencies to report records identifying prohibited persons to the Attorney General. It also requires that federal agencies that issue prohibiting mental health adjudications or commitments establish a program under which a person subject to such an adjudication or commitment can apply for relief from his or her firearms disability according to standards under 18 U.S.C. 925(c). Additionally, the Act provides that a prohibiting adjudication or commitment issued by a federal agency or department may be nullified in certain instances by a qualified set aside, expungement, release from mandatory treatment, or other specified means.
CHANGE TO THE MENTAL HEALTH PROHIBITOR: Prior to the NICS Improvement Act, section 922(g)(4) was effectively a lifetime prohibition on possessing firearms by any person "who had been adjudicated a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution." The Act, however, provides that when relief is granted under a federal or state relief from disabilities program that meets the requirements of the Act, or when certain automatic relief conditions are met with respect to persons federally adjudicated or committed, the event giving rise to the mental health disability is "deemed not to have occurred" for purposes of the federal firearm prohibition.
Section 922(g)(4), Title 18, United States Code, prohibits the receipt or possession of firearms by an individual who has been "adjudicated as a mental defective" or "committed to a mental institution." Regulations issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), 27 C.F.R. § 478.11, define these terms as follows:
Adjudicated as a mental defective.
(1) A determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease:
-- Is a danger to himself or to others; or
-- Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs.
(2) The term shall include —
-- A finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and
-- Those persons found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a and 72b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 850a, 876b.
Committed to a mental institution. A formal commitment of a person to a mental institution by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority. The term includes a commitment to a mental institution involuntarily. The term includes commitment for mental defectiveness or mental illness. It also includes commitments for other reasons, such as for drug use. The term does not include a person in a mental institution for observation or a voluntary admission to a mental institution.
The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) served as the data collection agent for BJS. State-level drug court coordinators provided points of contact for each problem-solving court operating in their state. NCSC combined information from court websites, court-related organizations, news media, press releases, marketing efforts, and related associations to form a comprehensive list of 3,633 problem-solving courts in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
A court can operate more than one problem-solving court at a single location. In such cases, the Census of Problem-Solving Courts (CPSC) counted each problem-solving court separately. If multiple court locations participated in a single problem-solving court, they were counted as one problem-solving court. Data were collected online and via paper questionnaires. Courts provided information on court type, size, frequency of sessions, issues addressed, services used, participant eligibility requirements, point of entry, benefits to participants, other characteristics of their operations, and case outcomes.
The report includes juvenile and adults in some analyses, but the data included juvenile drug courts and juvenile mental health courts.
No. The total homicide count includes all types of intentional homicide and involuntary manslaughter as ruled by a medical examiner or other official medical investigation. The total includes homicides committed by inmates. It also includes homicides as a result of staff use of force, such as positional asphyxia, or suffocation caused by the position of the inmate's body, while the inmate is being removed from a cell. It includes legal-intervention homicides (e.g., an inmate is shot in the process of escape). The count also includes deaths caused by events prior to incarceration (e.g., an inmate was shot during an altercation on the street and dies from complications of the gunshot wound while incarcerated).
Financial fraud is defined as acts that “intentionally and knowingly deceive the victim by misrepresenting, concealing, or omitting facts about promised goods, services, or other benefits and consequences that are nonexistent, unnecessary, never intended to be provided, or deliberately distorted for the purpose of monetary gain.” (See Stanford Center on Longevity. (2015). Framework for a taxonomy of fraud. https://longevity.stanford.edu/framework-for-a-taxonomy-of-fraud/)
Caution must be used when using trend data, as definitions and reporting capabilities change over time. Some changes in definitions are due to BJS initiatives to improve counting (such as separating out state inmates held in private facilities or local jails), some may be driven by the Office of Management and Budget (such as changes in racial and ethnic definitions), and some may be noted by the reported jurisdiction (such as noncitizen inmate counts, including those who were foreign-born).
Whenever possible, BJS notes these differences and encourages users to check footnotes within tables and jurisdiction notes within reports to better understand why comparability can vary from state-to-state or year-to-year.
Note: When you see a sharp increase or decline in a year-to-year count, it is recommended to verify there was no change in definition or counting method.
Not all datasets are available for public use. We are actively working on mechanisms to make as many datasets as possible accessible to the public. Much of our data is archived at the University of Michigan’s National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. A lag period exists between the release of a report and the archiving of the data, as the dataset must be submitted to the archive with full documentation and may undergo disclosure review to protect the confidentiality of the respondents, when applicable.
In the Mortality in Correctional Institutions collection (MCI), custody refers to the physical holding of an inmate in a facility. It also includes the period during which a correctional authority maintains a chain of custody over an inmate. For instance, if a jail transports an ill inmate to a hospital for medical services and that inmate dies while in the chain of custody of the jail, that death is counted as a death in custody. A death that occurs when an inmate is not in the custody of a correctional authority is considered beyond the scope of the MCI. Out-of-scope deaths include inmates on escape status or under the supervision of community corrections, specifically inmates on probation, parole, or home-electronic monitoring.
It takes about 2 years to process death data because core data collection runs the full calendar year (i.e., January 1 through December 31). BJS does not report partial or incomplete data. Once core data collection is completed at the end of the first quarter of the following calendar year, data quality activities begin, which include waiting for autopsy results, following up with respondents who have not submitted any data, and clarifying survey items. Data quality activities end in September and a data file is delivered sometime in the fall. Data analysis and report writing typically take an additional six months, depending on the report.