The Bureau of Justice Statistics

1. The Bureau of Justice Statistics

2. Mission and Organization • Statistical arm of the Department of Justice • Staffed by about 40 statisticians (grades 9-15) and 20 other support staff • Report data on the life-cycle of a crime from when it occurs through post-correctional outcomes • Five major units: • Victimization • Law Enforcement • Prosecution and Adjudication • Corrections • Special Projects and Recidivism

4. The National Crime Victimization Survey • Flagship Program • Measures national yearly rate of reported and unreported crime victimization and property thief, and moreover characteristics and consequences of these crimes. • Rotating panel survey - • Households interviewed twice a year for about three years. • Completes about 40,000 households interviews / 60,000 person interviews every six months

5. Challenges and Research • Ongoing challenges: • Very low incidence rate of crimes (21.1 violent crimes committed per 1,000 persons) => massive screening required to obtain data on crimes. • Currently only provides yearly national estimates • Given sensitivity, precise change estimates required • New directions • Desire for survey to produce sub-national estimates • Reduce survey costs to enable expansion

6. Example Data Analysis Activities • Goal: Measure impact of various factors on the occurrence of motions for post-trial relief in civil tort and contract trials • Challenges: • Factor effects varied by case-type • Factors heavy correlated with each other • County “climate” suspected to highly influence rates • Questions: • How to transform factors to eliminate multicollinearity • How to disentangle county effects from respective case profiles

7. Simple Data Analysis, Significant Impacts Violent crime by juvenile offenders peaks in the afternoon; violent crime by adults peaks in the late evening Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report

8. Simple Data Analysis, Significant Impacts

9. Some Big Ideas for BJS • Better linkage of data criminal justice data to understand flow through system and reasons behind progression • Establish a set of special recidivism studies capturing the behaviors of various populations • Examine the prosecution of juveniles in adult criminal courts to asses the variability across states in waiver statues and practices • Examine feasibility and utility of conducting officer surveys to examine: • Recruitment, retention, barriers to cross-agency transfer and promotion, and other career opportunity issues • Interactions with citizen groups, victims, and advocacy groups • Expand the collection and reporting of data on inmate health conditions.

10. Is Federal Career Is it Right for You?

11. Strengths • Greater opportunity to explore issues in more depth, and to conduct primary research • Greater opportunity and value placed on attending and presenting at professional conferences and working on peer-reviewed journals. • Surrounded by peer professionals • Part of the mission rather than being viewed among the “support staff.” • Projects affect real differences in people’s lives

12. Considerations • Government, non-profit and social science work still falls short of other industries in pay rates (but gaps have narrowed) • Slow to change, less ability to try new things • Swinging budgets – need patience • May need to move around to work on new things, and for advancement.

13. Recommendations • Coursework is directly applicable to real-world problems • Don’t discount the theory • Look for opportunities to work on difficult data issues • Invest in a survey methods class • Be prepared to start with the “grunt work” • Look to enhance interpersonal, management, leadership skills • Take as many writing/presentation classes as possible