NCRP_2009_OMB_Supporting_Statement_7-22-09[1]

10

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

A. Justification

1. Necessity of Information Collection

The National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) has collected various administrative inmate data records from state departments of corrections and parole since 1983. The continued annual collection of information by the NCRP is critical for describing the criminal justice correction system to understand and explore numerous policy issues.

The size, composition, growth, and efficaciousness of state prison populations in controlling crime are issues that have been at the forefront of discussions of corrections policy for decades, and as recently released reports and pending Congressional legislation indicate, these are discussions that show no signs of abating soon.

Describing and understanding these aspects of prison populations is complicated by the variation among states in sentencing policy and practices—which affect who goes to prison and with what sentences—and prison release practices—which in conjunction with sentences imposed determine how long offenders stay. Further complicating the flows are the variation among states in community supervision practices— which can provide for an alternative method for offenders to enter prison through violations of conditions of supervision.

To describe and explain changes in the size and composition of states’ prison populations, as well as to determine their effects on crime, individual-level administrative data are needed on offenders in the prison system, including prison admissions, prison releases, prison stock populations, and movements of offenders onto parole (that is, post-custody supervision) and off parole back into prison from parole. In addition, to assess states’ contributions to these factors, data are needed by state, and to assess variations within states in implementation of policies, the data need to contain appropriate indicators for meaningful units of aggregation, such as the county of sentencing. Finally, to aggregate the state-level data up to the national level or to produce national-level estimates of important quantities, the data must be arrayed in a common format, in which the variables reliably measure core concepts across states.

The NCRP database is the only national database that meets all of these criteria. It collects individual-level administrative data for offenders in custody of state prisons from state departments of corrections or parole. These data are collected for all four components of the prison system in a common format that rests upon standard definitions of variables. As the NCRP data pertain to each state, and the county of sentencing is a meaningful geographic entity for sentencing practice—felony courts in states are typically organized at the county level—the data include this meaningful sub-state geographical unit that can be used to assess within state variations in practices that contribute to change in state prison populations.

Within NCRP, a separate dataset is obtained annually for each of four relevant cohorts so as to describe the components of the prison system. The four cohorts are: (1) offenders admitted into prison; (2) offenders in prison at yearend; (3) offenders released from prison; and (4) offenders discharged from parole. Each cohort contains a common set of variables, but each cohort pertaining to a later stage in the prison system contains additional variables relevant to the stage. The core variables collected from administrative records for all four individual-level NCRP datasets include measures of:

• the offenses for which offenders have been sentenced to prison;

• the lengths and types of sentence imposed;

• time served in jail prior to admission;

• the type of commitment (e.g., from the court, that is, a new court commitment stemming from a felony conviction versus entry as a parole or conditional release violator);

• demographic attributes of offenders, such as age, race, gender, and education level completed; and

• the entity responsible for offenders (such as the state maintaining jurisdiction over an offender).

The prison stock cohort includes the common core plus measures of expected (or projected) dates of release from prison. The prison release cohort also includes actual dates of release, actual time served, and method of release from prison (e.g., conditional release onto parole or unconditional release). The parole discharge dataset—which pertains only to offenders released from prison conditionally—also includes data on the type of discharge from parole (e.g., success or failure) and dates of discharge.

The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Street Act of 1968 (see attachment), as amended (42 U.S.C. 3732) authorizes the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to compile data on state and federal admissions to prison, releases from prison and discharges from community supervision (parole). Since 1983, the Census Bureau, through an interagency agreement, has collected these data for BJS.

The NCRP has consolidated and improved corrections reporting at the national level as well as reduced the reporting burden of participating jurisdictions. The NCRP has increased in scope since 1983 from 18 to 41 participating jurisdictions, and now includes more than 90 percent of all persons admitted or released from prisons annually and 80 percent of prisoners in custody at year-end. Beginning in 1999, the NCRP was enhanced to include an inventory of prison inmates in custody at year-end, growing from 9 to 27 jurisdictions. Prior to 1999, no national level data collection provided annual individual-level data for offenders in custody of State prisons.

2. Needs and Uses

The NCRP data fulfill a wide variety of needs within BJS and for the broader research and public policy community that addresses issues in corrections and the prison system. A brief review of a few recent reports—all of which have used NCRP data in one way or another—gives an indication of the importance of these data to the national debate on corrections practice.

Within BJS, the NCRP data are used for a number purposes, including providing data that are used in generating annual estimates of the gender, race, and age composition of state prison populations; and providing data used to generate annual estimates of the offense distribution of state prisoners. These annual estimates of the gender, race, and age distributions and of the offense distributions within race and within gender categories are published in BJS’ bulletins on prison populations.¹ In using the NCRP in this way, BJS supplements the data in its National Prisoners Statistics—which are establishment surveys of departments of corrections that provide aggregate counts of the number of offenders in prison.

The BJS annual estimates of the offense distributions of state prisoner by race were used in a recent Sentencing Project publication that garnered national attention. In “The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs,” the Sentencing Project used BJS estimates of the number of white and black drug offenders in state prisons from 1999 through 2005 to document changes the slight decline in the number of black drug offenders and increase in the number of white drug offenders.² Indeed, throughout its more than 20-year history from its first report in 1988 when it reported on the number of black men under the control of the criminal justice system as compared to the number in higher education through its most recent effort above, the Sentencing Project has relied on BJS data on the racial composition of prison populations, and BJS has relied on NCRP data to produce these estimates.

Dominating the current debate on prison policy are concerns about the size of U.S. prison populations and its effects on crime. Recent legislation proposed by Senator Jim Webb, the National Criminal Justice Act of 2009, would require a re-examination of the criminal justice system with a focus on incarceration policies. Testimony by Senator Webb on June 11^th of this year before the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary emphasized Senator Webb’s interest in lowering the incarceration rate. The NCRP data would be indispensable in addressing a number of the issues that he addressed in his testimony, such as focusing incarceration policies on criminal activities that threaten public safety, racial disparities in imprisonment for drug offenses, prisoner re-entry, and understanding the role of parole revocations in contributing to prison population growth.

Policy advocates for smaller prison populations also have used BJS data derived from the NCRP. For example, a recent Pew Foundation report made its case that the U.S. prison populations are too high, that too many low-level offenders have been imprisoned when they could be supervised in the community at a lower cost and at minimal risk to the public, that the size of the prison population could be reduced without harming public safety, and that there are more cost-effective ways to manage correctional populations than using a “prison-fits-all” pattern of punishment.³ While the Pew report relied primarily on other BJS’ National Prisoners Statistics data, data on the racial composition of prison populations and the age of prisoners were derived from NCRP.

Not all advocate for smaller prison populations. Some have argued that by incarcerating offenders, prison policy has contributed to reductions in crime by both incapacitating offenders (thereby preventing them from committing crimes on the street while they are in prison) and by deterring other offenders through the threat of long sentences to prison.⁴ The empirical work cited in these arguments drew heavily upon NCRP data at the state level.

Understanding the relationship between the decline in crime during the 1990s and throughout the current decade—as crime rates, particularly violent crime rates declined then stayed comparatively low—and the growth of the prison population has also been addressed by researchers and policy advocates using NCRP data. Some research has pointed out that prison population growth reflected policy choices and practices more than changes in crime rates. For example, Blumstein and Beck show that increased use of technical violations of conditions of parole contributed significantly to prison population growth during the late 1990s,⁵ and Raphael argues that sentencing policy is of first order importance in explaining the growth in the prison population.⁶ And, with the increase in the U.S. prison population, some have also questioned whether additional increases in the prison population will be cost-effective in terms of crime reduction.⁷ All of these studies relied heavily upon NCRP data.

In addition, NCRP data have been used to address issues related to prisoner reentry;⁸ the effects of drug control policy on prison populations and black Americans;⁹ studies of economic models of crime applied to the criminal justice system in which NCRP data were featured prominently in studies of the prison population;¹⁰ estimates of time served in prison and its relationship to sentencing policy;¹¹ and the NCRP data have been used to study the unintended consequences of incarceration, such as their possible effects on family formation.¹²

BJS is currently designing a study to assess the recidivism characteristics of persons released from prison in 2005, similar to previously published BJS studies based on cohorts of prisoners released in 1983 and 1994. To reduce the costs of this new recidivism study, BJS will rely heavily on the data collected by NCRP. NCRP data will (1) establish a sampling frame of inmates released by each state; (2) provide a record of each released inmate including information on the prisoners’ demographics, reasons for imprisonment, lengths of stay and parole violations; and (3) provide the prisoners’ state identification numbers that can be used to obtain their criminal history records automatically through BJS’ direct assess to the FBI's Interstate Identification Index. Using this data collection method, the new recidivism study will not burden (as was done in the past) state departments of corrections with requests for information of release cohorts and state criminal history repositories with requests for rap sheets. It will also streamline the data collection period from a period of years to a period of a few weeks.

In sum, the NCRP provides data on key national and State level issues in sentencing and correctional policies. Because the data are continuous and comparable among the States, the NCRP allows users to address such issues as current trends in sentencing and time served in prison and on parole, recidivism, rates of success for parole supervision and other key re-entry topics, the impact of mandatory sentencing practices on prison admissions and releases, the adoption of truth in sentencing policies and practices, the changing offense composition of inmates entering, exiting and under custody of the nation=s prisons, and the shifting demographic profile of inmates.

If the NCRP were discontinued, decision makers would lose a valuable source of information for criminal justice system planning and policy formulation.

BJS makes the NCRP data set available to the public through public use files located at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data Archive at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Detailed tables are tabulated and published on the Internet through the BJS website (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm).

BJS has used data from the NCRP in reports to document rates of recidivism (see Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994, NCJ 193427), success rates among parolees over time (see Trends in State Parole, 1990-2000, NCJ 184735), changes in sentencing and time served (see Measures of Length of Stay in State Prison, forthcoming, and Truth in Sentencing in State Prisons, NCJ 170032), estimates of the offense distribution for inmates in custody (see Prisoners in 2004, NCJ 210677), changes in the number of drug offenders entering and exiting prison (see Drugs and Crime on the BJS website: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/drugs.htm), characteristics of female inmates (see Women Offenders, NCJ 175688), changes in the number of juvenile offenders in prison (see Profile of State Prisoners under Age 18, 1985-97, NCJ 176989).

Other governmental entities that have used the NCRP data include the following:

U.S. Congress—to evaluate the effectiveness of mandatory sentencing and other sentencing guideline issues. (Although this use dates back to the mid-1990s, NCRP data were used extensively by Congressional staff in developing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which was amended in October of 2000.)

U.S. Department of Justice—Currently BJS is using NCRP data to respond to an Attorney General initiative on racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Historically, NCRP has been used to develop eligibility measures under the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive (VOITIS) Grant Program of the 1994 Crime Act; evaluate data provided by applicants; and to determine national and State trends. The NCRP data were used extensively by BJS staff to determine accuracy of data submitted to the Department of Justice under the VOITIS grant program.

National Institute of Corrections—to study trends in sentencing and time served in prison and on parole and the offense composition of admission cohorts. (NCRP has been used by NIC as a model for States developing offender-based correctional information systems. For example, during 1999 BJS staff provided to NIC a detailed description of the NCRP data elements and an analysis of data from comparable States to assist in the enhancement of correctional information systems in Alaska.)

National Institute of Justice—to study trends in sentencing and time served in prison and on parole, and the offense composition of an admissions cohort. (Researchers conducting the National evaluation of the 1994 Crime Act have relied heavily on NCRP data. For example, one study published by NIJ looked at the effects of truth-in-sentencing on time served and it relied heavily on NCRP data.¹³ In addition, numerous research projects funded by NIJ draw on NCRP data to track the impact of sentencing reform at the State level.)

U.S. Sentencing Commission—to study differences in sentencing and time served in

prison and on parole, and the offense composition of an entering cohort between the

Federal government and the States.

Office of National Drug Control Policy—to study changes in the offense composition of entering cohorts as influenced by sentencing practices. (The NCRP provides essential data for tracking the growth of drug offenders in State prison. Without these data, annual estimates of the number of drug offenders in State prisons could not be made.)

State and local corrections officials—to assess and compare trends in admission to prison and parole. (Because NCRP provides a common set of concepts, standard definitions and counting rules, states are able to use NCRP as a baseline for comparison.)

3. Use of Technology

 The NCRP data collection uses standardized reporting items and formats. Most participating jurisdictions provide data on an annual basis, using existing computer extraction programs. Through funding and technical assistance, BJS and Census Bureau staff have worked with States to develop these programs.

 Automated Data Processing (ADP) respondents extract information for the NCRP from a database which is uploaded using a secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP), or written to disks. Secure FTP was first implemented in January 2009, for use in collecting the 2008 NCRP data files, and has been used by nearly 90 percent of respondents. The Census Bureau provides the necessary computer disks, as well as the necessary postage paid, pre-addressed Fedex envelopes for respondents who prefer to make submissions via mail. All respondents for 2007 and beyond have provided data in an electronic format.

 The Census Bureau and BJS provide the respondents with technical assistance as needed to minimize respondents= efforts in data collection and to improve data quality control. For example, BJS staff recode State statutes and other offense codes to standard NCRP codes. This activity significantly reduces the burden on participating jurisdictions. The Census Bureau also adjusts its data processing to allow states to submit data in any format that they are comfortable providing.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

The National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) is not duplicated by any other program or government agency. No other program employs uniform criteria and comparable definitions when collecting data of this kind from State corrections agencies. BJS is the only government agency that collects national level data on sentencing, time served in prison and on parole, and offense composition for prison admissions, releases, and offenders in the custody of State prisons at year-end.

5. Impact on Small Business

Not applicable. The NCRP data collection does not involve small businesses or other small entities. The respondents are state departments of corrections.

6. Consequences of Less Frequent Collection

The NCRP data are collected annually, and BJS has devoted resources to help to expedite processing of the data in order to enhance its timeliness. Less frequent collection of data would impose burdens on respondents who have set up computerized methods to generate the NCRP data. In some states, data on admissions into and releases from prison are updated in real time, and were extracts of annual admissions and releases to be requested on a schedule other than annual, some data would be lost due to the updating process. In addition, as NCRP is the only national data set that contains comparative data for monitoring trends in sentence length and time served, delaying or collecting data less frequently would impact BJS’ and other researchers’ ability to detect changes in sentencing practice that affect prison populations. Less frequent collection—say a biennial collection—would introduce gaps into the data. This would also impact users’ ability to track changes and their impacts on prison populations.

As BJS also uses the NCRP data to produce annual estimates of the gender, race, and age composition of prison populations and annual estimates of the offense distribution in state prisons within gender and race, less frequent collection of the data would preclude BJS from providing timely data on these measures.

Any less frequent data collection would result in a deficiency of the information needed by criminal justice planners and policy makers to make timely and informed decisions.

7. Special Circumstances Influencing Collection

Not applicable. The NCRP collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6

8. Federal Register Publication and Outside Consultation

The NCRP collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6. The 60 and 30-day notices for public commentary have been published in the Federal Register. The agency received no comments on the NCRP collection.

BJS and Census Bureau staff maintain frequent contact with data providers and data users in an effort to improve data collection, reporting procedures, data analysis, and data presentation. The individuals listed below have been consulted on such issues as instructions for form completion, reporting format, item content, publication, data collection, and design of data display:

Mr. James Alibrio

Research and Statistics

1101 South Front St, Ste 5500

Harrisburg, PA 17104

Mr. Shawn Bushway

Associate Professor

School of Criminal Justice

University at Albany, SUNY

135 Western Avenue

Albany, NY 12222

Mr. Robert Brinson

Director of Information

Department of Corrections

2020 Yonkers Rd

Raleigh, NC 27604

Mr. David. Daniels

Director, Planning and Research

Department of Corrections

7534 Linderson Way

Tumwater, WA 98501

Ms. Carol DeFrances

Lead Statistician, Hospital Care Team

National Center for Health Statistics

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

3311 Toledo Rd., Mailroom #3409

Hyattsville, MD 20782

Mr. Adam Gelb

Director, Public Safety Performance Project

Pew Charitable Trusts

901 E Street, NW

Washington, DC 20004

Mr. James A. Gondles, Jr.

Executive Director

American Correctional Association

4380 Forbes Blvd

Lanham, MD 20706

Ms. Karen Hall

Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Executive Services 861-A I-45 North Hunstville, TX 77320

Mr. Jake Horowitz

Program Manager

Public Safety Performance Project

Pew Charitable Trusts

901 E Street, NW

Washington, DC 20004

Mr. Christopher A. Innes

Director, Justice Systems Research Division

National Institute of Justice

810 Seventh St., NW

Washington, DC 20531

Ms. Kim Koppsch-Woods

Manager, Automated Data Systems

Michigan Department of Corrections

206 East Michigan Ave

Lansing, Michigan 48933

Mr. Paul Korotkin

Director, Department of Correctional Services

State Office Campus Bldg, #2

Albany, NY 12226

Mr. James Lynch

John Jay School of Criminal Justice

Criminology and Public Policy

899 Tenth Ave

New York, NY 10019

Ms. Evelyn Patterson

Department of Sociology & Crime,

Law and Justice

The Pennsylvania State University

1004 Oswald Tower

University Park, PA 16802-6207

Ms. Joan Petersilia

Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society

University of California, Irvine

2317 Social Ecology II

Irvine, CA 92697-7080

Ms. Lettie Prell

Director of Research

Iowa Department of Corrections

510 East 12th Street

Des Moines, IA 50319

Mr. Steve Van Dine

Chief, Bureau of Planning/Research

Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections

970 Freeway Drive North-Research

Columbus, OH 43229

Mr. Bruce Western

Professor, Department of Sociology

Harvard University

430 William James Hall

33 Kirkland Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

9. Payment or Gift to Respondents

Not applicable. No payments or gifts are offered to NCRP respondents.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

BJS and the Census Bureau hold in confidence any information that could identify an individual according to Title 42, United States Code, Sections 3735 and 3789g. The Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics provides written notification to the respondents that all information is confidential and that participation is voluntary.

11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

Not applicable. The NCRP questionnaire does contain any sensitive questions.

12. Estimate of Hour Burden

The costs to respondents incurred as a result of participating in this data collection are costs that would be incurred in the normal course of daily operations, except for the hours involved in preparing the data. Initial participation requires the one-time development of a computer program to extract data to be sent to NCRP. This computer program is then re-run to prepare data for submission in subsequent years. From discussions with both current and potential contributors to the NCRP, BJS estimates the time needed to develop computer programs to extract data and to prepare a response to be 24 hours, on average, per type of database containing the information needed, incurred during the first year of participation, and 8 hours, per type of database, during the second and subsequent years.

The development of computer programs to extract prison records with information on prison admissions (NCRP-1A) and prison releases (NCRP 1-B) is estimated to require a total of 24 hours, as these represent snapshots from the same database. The first year provision of information on persons leaving parole supervision (NCRP-1C) and persons in prison at yearend (NCRP-1D) are each estimated to require an additional 24 hours, as these records reside in separate databases.

During the second and subsequent years of participation, the average time needed to provide data is expected to be 8 hours per respondent for prisoner admissions and releases (NCRP-1A and NCRP-1B), 8 hours for data on persons leaving parole supervision (NCRP-1C), and 8 hours for data on persons in prison at yearend (NCRP-1D), based on conversations with data providers during follow-up calls. The average of 8 hours per database takes into account that some respondents just need 2 hours to make a copy of a research database, while others may need to do additional work, including modifying computer programs, preparing input data, and documenting the record layout.

Follow-up consultations with respondents are usually necessary while processing the data to obtain further information regarding the definition, completeness and accuracy of their report. Respondents are also asked to review their data after the processing is completed. This consultation, review and feedback are estimated to take 2 hours per respondent.

In contrast with report year 2006, when 2 respondents continued to provide data manually,

all respondents for 2007 and beyond have been providing data on magnetic media or in other electronic formats. For the two states that provided data manually in 2006, the expected burden for 2009 is 28 hours (including 16 hours for 2 respondents for NCRP-1A and NCRP-1B, 8 hours for 1 respondent for NCRP-1C, and 4 hours for two respondents to review their data). This represents a decrease of 630 burden hours since 2006, when the manual reporting burden for these two states was 658 hours (including 434 hours for NCRP-1A, 200 hours for NCRP-1B, 20 hours for NCRP-C, and 4 hours for review).

BJS anticipates 41 current NCRP participants to provide NCRP-1A, NCRP-1B, NCRP-1C, and NCRP-1D data for report year 2009, though not each respondent will provide every type of record. The 41 current NCRP participants includes 39 respondents expected to provide admissions and release data (NCRP-1A and NCRP-1B), 29 respondents expected to provide data on persons released from parole supervision (NCRP-1C), and 27 respondents expected to provide information on the yearend “stock” population (NCRP-1D). Including the time needed to review their data submissions, the respondent burden for report year 2009 among current NCRP participants is expected to be 842 hours, as depicted in the table below.

To improve the utility of NCRP data, BJS has set a goal of obtaining each NCRP file type from each state for report year 2009, both from states that currently do not participate in NCRP and states that that do not submit all types of NCRP files, for an additional 1,412 additional burden hours during the first year in which these data are provided. Full participation includes 288 burden hours for 12 respondents to each spend 24 hours, on average, to write computer programs to extract data on prison admissions (NCRP-1A) and prison releases (NCRP-1B). Twenty-two respondents (528 hours) will need to write computer programs to provide information on persons leaving parole supervision (NCRP-1C), and 24 respondents (576 hours) will need to write computer programs to provide information on persons serving time in prison at yearend 2009 (NCRP-1D).

The 1,412 additional burden hours needed to obtain all NCRP file types from all states also includes 20 hours for consultation, review and feedback after data submissions have been from 10 states that currently do not participate in NCRP (an average of 2 hours per state). The submission of new files by states that currently provide data to NCRP is not expected to result in additional time for review, as questions typically involve matters of transmission and receipt of data, and issues common to all files, such as the mapping of state offense codes to a common set of BJS offense codes.

Reporting task	Total annual responses	Estimated burden per response*	Total estimated respondent burden (person-hours)
ADP, current	41
NCRP-1A NCRP-1B	39 files	8 hours	312
NCRP-1C	29 files	8 hours	232
NCRP-1D	27 files	8 hours	216
Review of data	41	2 hours	82
Subtotal. currently reporting			842
ADP, new	10
NCRP-1A NCRP-1B	12 files	24 hours	288
NCRP-1C	22 files	24 hours	528
NCRP-1D	24 files	24 hours	576
Review of data	10	2 hours	20
Subtotal, new submissions			1.412
ADP, current plus new	51
NCRP-1A NCRP-1B	51 files	12 hours	600
NCRP-1C	51 files	15 hours	760
NCRP-1D	51 files	16 hours	792
Review of data	51	2 hours	102
Total			2,254
* The estimated burden per response for each type of file for “ADP, current plus new” represents a weighted average of the anticipated number of responses from current respondents x 8 hours per response, plus the anticipated number of responses from new respondents x 24 hours per response.

The burden of 1,412 hours for new submissions for report year 2009 is expected to decrease to 484 hours for report year 2010, when computer programs which were written to provide data for 2009 are re-run. Only the higher estimate of 1,412 burden hours to obtain each new submission of NCRP data is included in this request.

Full participation in NCRP, involving the provision of each NCRP file type (NCRP-1A, NCRP-1B, NCRP-1C, and NCRP-1D) by each of 51 respondents for report year 2009 is estimated to require a total of 2,254 burden hours, including 842 hours for submission of data files which were first submitted prior to 2009, and 1,412 hours to write computer programs to provide data files which have not been provided prior to 2009. A total of 51 respondents are needed because separate responses are needed from both the California Department of Corrections, and the California Department of Corrections, Juvenile Justice Division, which incarcerates some young adults.

13. Estimate of Cost Burden

The costs to respondents incurred as a result of participating in this data collection are costs that would be incurred in the normal course of daily operations.

14. Estimated Cost to Federal Government

The estimated costs for collection, processing, and dissemination of the NCRP data in 2009 is $826,900, including:

$690,000 -- Census Bureau

$375,000 for data collection, data processing, and program management

$280,000 for computer programming, providing data, furnishing publication-ready tables

$35,000 in miscellaneous charges -- costs related to postage, telephone calls, disks to respondents, printing, etc.

$136,900 -- Bureau of Justice Statistics

60% GS-13, Statistician ($66,000)

5% GS-12, Statistician ($3,800)

10% GS-15, Supervisory Statistician ($12,500)

Fringe benefits (@28% of salaries -- $23,000)

Other administrative costs (@30% of salary & fringe $31,600)

15. Reasons for Change in Burden

The previous estimate of respondent burden (2,298 hours) was partly based on the expected participation and receipt of manually-completed forms from 2 states for report year 2006. Both states have been converted to ADP respondents, leaving no manually reporting respondents for year 2009, and contributing to a net decrease in burden hours for report year 2009. All responses for 2009 and beyond are expected to be ADP submissions.

The estimate of burden hours for report year 2009 was also affected by the recognition that prison admission (NCRP-1A) and prison release data (NCRP-1B) generally reside in the same database, but parole release data (NCRP-1C) require running a separate computer extraction program. Further, not every state that provides NCRP-1A and NCRP-1B data has been providing data for NCRP-1C. (Previous burden estimates have always included separate burden hour estimates for yearend prison population data, NCRP-1D, to reflect that these data reside in a separate database.) Accurate accounting of the time required to provide prisoner admission and release records, separate from parole release records, coupled with the recognition that previous burden estimates included time for writing computer programs to extract data, when in fact, current respondents were writing programs once and re-running them in subsequent years, further contributed to a net decrease in estimated burden hours.

The effect of the conversion of two states to ADP reporting and more accurate accounting of the time involved to provide data to NCRP on a recurring basis would have resulted in a greater decrease in the estimated burden hours for 2009, except for the decision to make an effort to obtain all NCRP file types from all states for the purpose of making a major improvement in NCRP data quality. Even with the expansion of NCRP to obtain all NCRP file types from all states, however, the number of burden hours associated with NCRP are expected to decrease to 2,254 for 2009, a net decrease of 44 hours from 2006 (2,298 hours).. The annual burden for NCRP is expected to decrease further for 2010, when computer programs written to provide data for 2009 for the first time are re-run.

16. Plans for Publication

BJS’ plans for publication of NCRP data include the following: Annually, BJS tabulates and posts to its website data on prison admissions and releases and discharges from parole. A subset of 15 tables out of a larger set of 66 standard tables is posted to the website. The subset reflects the most frequently requested data. Data from the other tables are available by request. Related, BJS has undertaken and is nearing completion and revision to its website. As the new website gets rolled out, new online data analysis tools will be available for users. The NCRP data would be included among the datasets for online analysis. This would provide users with access to more of the data tables. Also annually, BJS uses NCRP data in its estimates of the gender, race, and age distribution of prison populations and of the distribution of offenses in state prisons, by gender and race.

BJS also plans to use the NCRP in several other reports: First, BJS plans to undertake methodological research investigating alternative methods for using NCRP data to generate national-level estimates of characteristics of the prison population. The current methods rely on ratio adjustments. BJS will explore maximum entropy methods, unit nonresponse adjustments, and other approaches to determining reliable methods, and BJS will publish a technical report on this. This report will inform the research community on its use of NCRP data. Second, BJS has implemented methods to link prison release records to parole discharge records and has plans for a report on time to failure on parole in relationship to local labor market conditions. This study will also require BJS to link county-level labor market data to the NCRP at the county-level. This work will inform the reentry topic, as it will assess the effects of demand for labor on post-prison recidivism. Third, much has been written about the aging of the prison population yet comparatively little empirical work has been done on a national level. BJS plans to use the NCRP data to study the trends in and changes in the age structure of the prison population. We currently hypothesize that there are two distinct processes at work contributing to the aging prison population: (a) the effects of longer sentences for violent offenses that went into effect in the mid-to-late 1990s and (b) the effects of recent admissions of older sex offenders. Fourth, BJS will publish a study assessing the recidivism characteristics of persons released from prison in 2005, using NCRP to provide the sampling frame. The new recidivism study is expected to be similar to previous BJS studies based on cohorts of prisoners released in 1983 and 1994, but the use of NCRP data is expected to reduce burden and cost, and to improve timeliness. Prisoner’s state identification numbers, already available through NCRP, will be used to obtain criminal history records automatically through BJS’ direct assess to the FBI's Interstate Identification Index. This will (1) eliminate the need to burden state departments of corrections with duplicative requests for information on prisoner release cohorts, and (2) make it unnecessary to request “rap sheets”, or “records of arrest and prosecution”, from state criminal history repositories. The amount of time needed to conduct a recidivism study is expected to be reduced from a period of years to a period of a few weeks, raising the possibility that future such studies can be conducted annually. This is expected to result in more comprehensive and timely information which can be used to more closely monitor and evaluate the effects of changes in prison release policies.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is responsible for the entire project and contracts the Census Bureau to collect the data. BJS analyzes the raw and tabular data prior to publication in tabular format via the BJS website.

17. Expiration Date Approval

The OMB Control Number and the expiration date will be published on instructions provided to all respondents.

18. Exceptions to the Certification Statement

There are no exceptions to the Certification Statement. The collection is consistent with all the guidelines set forth in 5 CFR 1320.9.

1 See, for example Prisoners in 2007, tables 6 and 7 and appendix tables 7 and 8 for data on the gender, race, and age distributions of prisoners, and appendix tables 10 and 11 for the offense distributions. Earlier years of the Prisoners report also show these tables. The BJS report Prison Inmates at Midyear, also uses NCRP data in generating the published estimates of the gender, race, and age distributions of the total incarcerated—prison plus jail—population.

2 Marc Mauer (2009), “The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs,” Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, April.

3 Pew Center on the States, Public Safety Project (2008),“One in 100: Behind Bars in America,” Philadephia, PA, February.

4 See, for example, William Spelman (2005), “Jobs or Jails? The Crime Drop in Texas,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 133-165. William Spelman (2000), “The Limited Importance of Prison Expansion,” in Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 97-129. Steven D. Levitt (1996), “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Legislation,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, p. 319-351. Thomas B. Marvell and Carlisle E. Moody (1994), “Prison Population Growth and Crime Reduction,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 109-140.

5 Alfred Blumstein and Allen J. Beck (1999, “Population Growth in U.S. Prisons, 1980-1996,” in Michael Tonry and Joan Petersilia, eds., Crime and Justice: Prisons, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Vol. 26, pp. 17-61.

6 Steven Raphael (2009), “Explaining the Rise in U.S. Incarceration Rates,” Criminology and Public Policy, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 87-95.

7 William Spelman (2009), “Crime, Cash, and Limited Options: Explaining the Prison Boom,” Criminology and Public Policy, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 29-77.

8 Alfred Blumstein and Allen J. Beck, (2005), “Reentry as a Transient State between Liberty and Recommitment,” in Jeremy Travis and Christy Visher, eds., Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America, New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 50-79.

9 Michael Tonry and Matthew Melewski, (2008), “The Malign Effects of Drug and Crime Control Policies on Black Americans,” in Michael Tonry, ed., Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Vol. 37, pp.1-44.

10 Shawn Bushway and Peter Reuter, (2008), “Economists’ Contributions to the Study of Crime and the Criminal Justice System, in in Michael Tonry, ed., Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Vol. 37, pp. 389-451.

11 Two recent papers addressed this issue using NCRP data: Evelyn J. Patterson and Samuel H. Preston (2008), “Estimating Mean Length of Stay in Prison: Methods and Applications,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 24, pp. 33-49. John F. Pfaff, (2009), “The Myths and Realities of Correctional Severity: Evidence from the National Corrections Reporting Program on Sentencing Practices,” New York: Fordham University.

12 William J. Sabol and James P. Lynch, (2003), “Consequences of Incarceration on Family Formation and Unemployment in Urban Areas,” in Darnell Hawkins and Samuel L. Myers, Jr., (eds.), Crime Control and Social Justice: The Delicate Balance, Greenwood Press, 2003

13 William Sabol, et al., (2001). The Influences of Truth-in-Sentencing Reforms on Changes in States’ Sentencing Practices and Prison Populations. Final Report. National Institute of Justice, September. Grant #NIJ 98-CE-VX-0006 (S-1).