FY 2021 Continuation of the Federal Justice Statistics Program

For nearly 40 years, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP) has been, and continues to be, the premier source for data and statistics regarding federal criminal justice case processing. Across components of the Department of Justice (Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals, Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Executive Office of Immigration Review) and U.S. Courts (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, U.S. Sentencing Commission, and Probation and Pretrial Services Office) the FJSP compiles, standardizes, and links data, creates routine reports, delivers statistics over the web, and performs sophisticated analysis on special topics. Data from these agencies are used to create analytic files (called SAFs) and data linking files give researchers an unparalleled ability to conduct investigations that further our understanding of criminal justice processes and outcomes. As such, data from this program are routinely used by research and policy stakeholders to inform our understanding of the nature and impact of various issues, topics and policies spanning the entire federal criminal justice system. For this project, “FY 2021 Continuation of the Federal Justice Statistics Program,” BJS and Abt will build upon the improvements and expansions of the FJSP we implemented over the past eight years. We will collaborate to process and disseminate the core FY2021 – FY2023 FJSP data products (which were expanded to include U.S. Marshals detention and immigration court); to assist BJS review and verification of the FJSP data and statistical products; to expand FJSP products (via, for example, civil data reported by the U.S. Courts and U.S. Attorneys, and through additional methods of linking data); meet BJS’s new deadlines of delivery of these products to the public; to expand delivery and access of data and statistics through new mediums and electronic formats; and to provide innovative ideas that demonstrate the value of the FJSP to a wide audience of users. For the FY2021 continuation, Abt will continue BJS's mission by continuing to refine the data, further expanding the core data with new supplements (e.g., civil, organizational, and asset forfeiture data), modernizing a web-based platform for delivering statistics, developing research to promote new analyses of those topics of greatest importance to BJS, and working to expand strategic dissemination of products generated under this program.