HIGHLIGHTS
- BJS wanted to compile data from federal criminal and immigration courts
- Uses all facets of Abt’s quantitative and data science capabilities.
- Annual data compilation to provide information for policymakers and the public.
The Challenge
Since 1983, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) FJSP has been the government’s source of information about people arrested on federal charges and processed through the federal criminal justice system, from the point of arrest to release from prison to supervision in the community. In 2017, the BJS awarded a cooperative agreement to Abt Global to operate the FJSP through 2021.
The Approach
Abt collects. standardizes, links, reports, archives, and analyzes individual-level data annually from agencies across the federal criminal justice and immigration court processes. FJSP includes data from the following agencies:
- US Marshals Service
- Executive Office of the US Attorneys
- Administrative Office of the US Courts (AOUSC)
- AOUSC’s Probation and Pretrial Services Office
- United States Sentencing Commission
- Bureau of Prisons
- Executive Office of Immigration Review
The FJSP’s breadth facilitates traditional and web-based statistical reporting and complex analyses about the federal criminal justice process.
The Results
Abt and BJS’s ongoing collaboration on the FJSP improves the speed of data collection, processing, and reporting to inform policymakers and an increasingly informed public. The increased capacity for usability, improved linking, and expansion of the FJSP’s data collections enhance the usefulness of the FJSP to its current users and expand its user base. Solidifying the platform will enable Abt and BJS to expand outreach to data users, provide modern visualizations over the web, and continue expansion of the FJSP platform to other parts of the federal civil and regulatory systems.
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