BJS FY24 Continuation of the Federal Justice Statistics Program

After nearly 40 years, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP) 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 for U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals Service, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Executive Office for Immigration Review) and U.S. Courts (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, United States Sentencing Commission, and U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Office) the FJSP collects, standardizes, and transforms raw agency data into analytic files (called SAFs). SAFs from adjacent agencies are linked together to form dyad link files, allowing researchers to follow individual person-cases throughout the federal system. Sanitized versions of SAFs from select agencies are made available for researcher access through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD). Aggregated data on law enforcement, prosecution/courts, and incarceration are reported on the Federal Criminal Case Processing Statistics (FCCPS) web query tool, allowing the public to create queries and data visualizations from the FJSP data. Consequently, 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, “BJS FY24 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 11 years. We will collaborate to process and disseminate the core FY2024 – FY2026 FJSP data products; assist BJS review and verification of the FJSP data and statistical products through enhanced data/dyad quality check programs and comparison to agency published reports; expand FJSP products (via, for example, incorporation of the Executive Office for Immigration Review and U.S. Marshals Service detention data into the NACJD series and FCCPS tool); expand the FCCPS tool to include additional agencies, novel data visualizations, and links to BJS reports; improve transparency of FJSP procedures; and provide innovative ideas that demonstrate the value of the FJSP to a wide audience of users. For the FY24 continuation, Abt will support BJS's mission by continuing to refine the data, enhance data quality, broaden the core data with new supplements/link files, expand the FCCPS tool to include additional agencies and features, and develop research to promote new analyses of those topics of greatest importance to BJS and the field.