Annual Survey of Jails in Indian Country, 2016-2019

The main objective of this project is to complete data collection and analytic tasks for the 2016 through 2019 versions of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Annual Survey of Jails in Indian Country (SJIC).

The SJIC is used to describe changes in the inmate population of jails in Indian country and how these facilities are staffed and operated. Intermittently, via addenda, the SJIC also is used to collect data on the programs and services these facilities provide, such as those related to inmate health care, medical assessments, mental health screening procedures, counseling programs, and education programs.

Under this award, the recipient of funds (Westat, Inc) will:

1) Carry out annual data collection and analytic activities including: fielding the survey; conducting follow-up efforts as necessary to obtain the high response rates; implementing data entry, verification, and edit procedures that result in an analytic dataset to be used to prepare tables for release in BJS annual bulletins on Jails in Indian Country; delivering the analytic dataset to BJS in a timely manner to allow for BJS analysis for the annual bulletins; preparing a standard set of facility level tables for the BJS annual bulletins; and delivering a final dataset and documentation to be used for archiving the data at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.

2) Field an addendum to the SJIC during the 2019 collection. The addendum will focus on topics that were addressed in the 2011 survey addendum that collected information on inmate health services and facility programs. In addition to the four tables produced annually, in 2019 the grantee will produce approximately 12 facility level tables on programs and services based on the result from the survey addendum.

3) Make recommendations to BJS for enhancing the SJIC. Throughout the SJIC, the awardee will use the annual tasks to identify opportunities to enhance the SJIC and obtain and assess the information necessary to make informed recommendations for these enhancements. The grantee will identify gaps in the collection; assess the costs and challenges associated with obtaining data to fill gaps, and develop methodologies to obtain the data. At the end of the review, the grantee will submit to BJS a document that summarizes what was learned from the review and propose changes to the SJIC that are deemed to be feasible based upon the review process. The document will identify and describe potential improvements or enhancements that could be made to the survey, its administration, or analysis that can be implemented during future iterations of the survey. The awardee will include recommendations to BJS that will lead to improved response rate, higher quality data, and the reduction in the time required for data collection.

4) Annually, Westat will attend a major conference or meeting of Indian country officials to present on issues related to the Jails in Indian Country project. The conference presentation tasks may include (a) leading focus groups to obtain feedback about the survey for the purposes of enhancing the survey, or (b) presentations at BIA manager meetings about the SJIC.

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

CA/NCF