Pilot Local Jail Reporting Program

Award Information

Awardee

Appriss Inc.

Award #

2015-R2-CX-K029

Location

Louisville, KY

Congressional District

Status

Closed

Funding First Awarded

2015

Total funding (to date)

$250,000

Original Solicitation

BJS FY 15 Pilot Local Jail Reporting Program

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2015, $50,000)

The Pilot Local Jail Reporting Program (LJRP) is a new program under which Appriss will provide a pilot data set and technical assistance for BJS to assess the feasibility of collecting individual-level jail inmate administrative data through a cooperative agreement with Appriss.

Upon successful evaluation of pilot data, BJS will invite Appriss to apply for the full Local Jail Reporting Program, where Appriss will routinely supply all available jail administrative data to BJS.

The individual-level data collected under the LJRP will include law enforcement operational variables (e.g., arrest and booking timestamps, charge codes, release reasons, and bond amount), sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., race, sex, marital status, and place of birth), physical attributes (e.g., weight, height, and photo), and personal identification information (names, social security numbers, state and federal inmate ID numbers, date of birth, and address of residence). Currently, Appriss can provide data from 69% (2,036) of the jail facilities in the country.

To assess the feasibility and benefits of the LJRP, BJS will conduct a pilot study to evaluate the quality of Appriss jail booking data. For this pilot study, Appriss will provide a data set consisting of all individual-level historical and current booking records from three statesCalifornia, Texas, and Georgiathrough the end of 2014. The data set will contain all available variables, including personal identifiers and links to photos. BJS will evaluate data quality by assessing data completeness, checking data validity and reliability, comparing jurisdiction-level inmate counts, admissions and releases to statistics from BJS collections, and linking jail booking records to BJS administrative datasets to check the quality of personal identifiers. Pending a successful pilot study of the data by BJS, Appriss will work with its data providers and jail jurisdictions to expand data coverage and reduce missing data on key variables, including state and national fingerprint identifiers.

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.

CA/NCF

Under this supplemental award, APPRISS will assist BJS is a comprehensive assessment of the quality and completeness of the data they can provide for statistical purposes.

Appriss data elements consist of identification variables (names, social security numbers, state and federal inmate ID numbers, date of birth, address of residence), demographic characteristics (age, race, Hispanic origin, sex, height, weight, marital status, nationality), and operational variables (arrest and booking time stamps, date and reason for release, charge code and description, bond amount, offense, disposition). Several elements have a high rate of missingness, and part of the BJS pilot study of three stateÂ’ data in 2015 and this supplement will be to determine whether this lack of data will degrade the overall quality of the data. Appriss has agreed to work with BJS in addressing the item missingness issue.

BJSÂ’s 2015 pilot study of three statesÂ’ data proved that the Appriss records could be matched to individual facilities in the ASJ, DCRP, and census of jail facilities, and aggregated to counts of annual admissions, releases, and one-day populations. BJS identified several issues through the pilot study, including the fact that the high rate of missingness on release date introduced error into these estimates, and that the quality of the identification variables varied over time and across the different jurisdictions. BJS wants to determine the extent of these issues across a wider range of jurisdictions, since problems with these elements could limit our ability to make estimates of annual population movements and measure recidivism.

BJS anticipates that they will also need technical support from Appriss to explain nuances of the data, as well as making small adjustments to certain jurisdictionsÂ’ data during the pilot studies, such as increasing their response rate on particular variables. If this enhanced pilot is successful, BJS hopes to routinize this collection to deliver an annual bolus of all jurisdictionsÂ’ data.

(NCA/NCF)

Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.

Date Created: September 16, 2015

Pilot Local Jail Reporting Program

Award Information

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2015, $50,000)

Supplemental Award 1 (Fiscal Year 2016, $200,000)

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