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BJS Data
Quality Guidelines
Appendix A
"Influential" BJS
Statistics for the Purposes of the BJS Data Quality Guidelines
The OMB guidelines
for implementing section 515 recognize that certain information must meet
a higher quality standard if the information is considered by the agency
to be "influential." Such data should have a sufficiently high
degree of transparency about the data and methodology to facilitate the
reproducibility of the information by qualified third parties.
BJS maintains approximately three dozen national statistical series designed
to gather data on criminal victimizations experienced by millions of residents
each year and operational data from the 50,000 agencies, offices, and
institutions which compose the U.S. justice system. These data series
provide the only national information to support policy formulation, program
development, and assessment of the extent to which changes occur in any
of the contingencies of crime and justice geographically or temporally.
Such data address fundamental information needs of the public and all
three branches of government.
When information
is defined as influential there is usually an added level of scrutiny
afforded this information, to include the need to ensure it is reproducible.
At DOJ, influential information is that which is expected to have a genuinely
clear and substantial impact at the national level and on major public
and private policy decisions as they relate to Federal justice issues.
BJS data covering crime and the major functional areas and decision-points
of the justice system all adhere to an explicit set of processes for insuring
the integrity and adequacy of the data collected, analyzed, and reported.
For BJS, data on
crime and the administration of justice undergo rigorous scrutiny and
verification prior to release and datasets used to generate statistical
findings are made accessible to the public to insure the replicability
of reported findings. BJS works to maintain the transparency of all of
its publicly disseminated statistics in two primary ways. First, BJS staff
are available to provide direct assistance in interpreting all statistical
data that BJS disseminates and in explaining the methodology employed.
Second, the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) maintains
over 300 BJS datasets and makes them available to researchers, journalists,
scholars, and other users. The NACJD provides public access for the replication
and secondary analysis of BJS statistics and findings, provides documentation
for data users, and provides electronic access to BJS source data for
public data users around the world.
At DOJ, the responsibility
for determining if information is influential lies with the components
that disseminate the information. DOJ components may designate certain
classes of information as either "influential" or not in the
context of their specific programs. Absent such designations, DOJ components
will determine whether information is influential on a case-by-case basis,
using the principles articulated in these guidelines. For BJS, each national
statistical series addresses a major data need which has been established
over a period of time and for which a significant audience exists. Two
examples include:
- the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) provides the only measure of personal and
household victimization and one of the Nation's primary indicators of
criminal activity. The NCVS provides details on the contingencies of
crime with detailed information on victims, offenders, circumstances
under which a crime took place, the relationship between offender and
victim, school crime, racial profiling, hate crime, and computer crime,
among other issues.
- BJS corrections
statistics provide the nation with critical information concerning the
size of the population in State and Federal prisons and local jails,
as well as those offenders under community supervision by probation
and parole authorities. Corrections statistics describe the growth of
these populations, provide estimates of prison crowding, and describe
in detail the population of prisoners under sentence of death.
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