SUPPORTING STATEMENT
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is requesting clearance to conduct the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) through November 30, 2024. The current NCRP collection is approved under OMB Control Number 1121-0065, which expires November 30, 2021. Through the NCRP, BJS collects administrative records on annual offender movement through state correctional systems in 5 cohorts: admitted into prison, released from prison, held in prison at year-end, and entered and discharged from post-custody community supervision (PCCS, formerly known as parole). BJS has reported annually from the NCRP since the collection began in 1983. These statistics are part of BJS’s core corrections statistics, and contribute fundamentally to BJS’s mission of describing transitions and movements of offenders through the criminal justice system.
BJS uses NCRP data to describe changes in the composition of and factors affecting the size of state prison and PCCS populations. These issues have been at the forefront of discussions on corrections policy for decades. For example, during the 1990s, BJS used NCRP data to help demonstrate the contribution of time served to the increase in prison populations .
The state prison population reached its highest point in 2009 with 1,407,400 prisoners under the jurisdiction of state correctional authorities, and since then has shown modest declines. BJS has used the NCRP to help define the factors behind this pattern, including decreases in the number of PCCS violators returning to prison, state-specific and federally-funded initiatives to cut prison populations, and a renewed emphasis by legislators and prosecutors to focus on imprisoning violent offenders. BJS has addressed issues concerning prison and PCCS populations by linking the NCRP data to other federal administrative datasets through the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau.
State departments of corrections (DOCs) submit individual-level records for each prisoner in their system to NCRP using standardized definitions provided by BJS. The data in each cohort contain a common core of variables, and each cohort, other than admissions to prison, includes additional variables pertaining to the particular stage in the corrections system process represented by that cohort. The core variables collected for all 5 cohorts include—
date of admission,
type of commitment (e.g., a new court commitment stemming from a felony conviction, entry as a parole or conditional release violator, transfer, or unsentenced commitment),
offenses for which offenders have been sentenced to prison,
lengths and types of sentence imposed,
demographic attributes of offenders, including date of birth (to calculate age), race, gender, and educational attainment,
entity responsible for offenders (the state maintaining jurisdiction over an offender),
identification variables, including first and last name of each inmate, and identification numbers used by the state to designate individuals (BJS requests that states provide fingerprint-based IDs, including state ID and FBI ID, if possible.)
In addition, the measures of the year-end prison population (stock) cohort include expected (or projected) dates of release from prison. The data in the prison release cohort also include actual dates of release, actual time served, and method of release from prison (e.g., conditional release onto parole or unconditional release). The PCCS entry and exit datasets—which pertain only to offenders released from prison conditionally—also include data on the type of entry and discharge from PCCS (e.g., success or failure) and dates of entry and exit from community supervision.
Over the years, BJS has worked to increase state participation in NCRP. For 2019, 45 states submitted at least one type of NCRP record to BJS. While some data may be delivered several years after the reference period, BJS obtained data from all 50 states for 2011-2014, and at least 48 states for 2015-2018. For 2019 data collection, 43 states have reported despite the COVID-19 pandemic occurring during the collection period. NCRP data quality has remained high over the last 3 years.
BJS has also implemented enhancements focused on improving the reliability of NCRP records by linking records. Linking records within the NCRP strengthens BJS’s ability to track movements from prison admission to release from PCCS programs both within and across states, enhancing the scope of substantive issues that can be addressed with the NCRP. Linked records, first attempted in 2011, have been constructed for 43 states. Twenty-two states have linked PCCS term records for at least 2 years, with 28 having a linked PCCS term record for at least 1 year. The ability of linked records to capture data from unique individuals has been enhanced by the collection of the FBI fingerprint-based identification and Social Security numbers. The focus of the NCRP in the immediate future is to increase use of these data by BJS by publishing more reports based on NCRP, and to improve public access to the data while maintaining data security.
The size, costs, and social impacts of corrections in the United States and, in particular, of prison populations are of ongoing national interest and have national policy implications. Imprisonment, the nation’s most serious punishment for crime short of execution, is its most costly sanction. State governments spent over $49 billion on corrections in 2017, of which about 88% was spent on institutional corrections.1 The investments by states in managing prison populations have led to discussions about the use of incarceration to balance public safety, justice for victims, and costs. These debates have intensified as competing demands on states’ budgets have increased during the past 20 years. Increasingly, states have experimented with alternatives to imprisonment in an attempt to rein in the monetary and societal costs associated with incarceration. Further, media attention on prison conditions and strikes in prisons across the country may have been responsible for changes in legislation over the last 3 years aimed at improving prison conditions, especially for imprisoned women.2
Prison populations have decreased for each of the last 3 years, while parole populations have continued to increase during this same timeframe. For this reason, the NCRP is invaluable in its ability to track trends not only in imprisonment practices, but increasingly in the use of community corrections and the reintegration of former prisoners into the community.
BJS provides statistics on changes in the size and composition of the prison population, changes in flows—admissions and releases—in length of stay, and in returns to prison (parole recidivism). These statistics are central to understanding changes in practices by state courts and parole supervising agencies about whom to send to prison. BJS’s descriptive accounts of changes in the prison population inform the debate and provide data to stakeholders to address some of the evaluative issues on the scope and purpose of prison policy.
NCRP data provide the basis for BJS’s recidivism studies. This includes the most recent report that describing recidivism patterns of state prisoners released in 2008, for 10 years following release (see Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 24 States in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008–2018), NCJ 256094).
BJS uses NCRP data to respond to media requests on the demographic characteristics of state prison populations. Some of the most common questions asked of BJS by the media and public deal with the racial disparity in imprisonment. While data collected by the National Prison Statistics (NPS) data collection (OMB Control No. 1121-0102, expires 01/31/2023) provides an aggregate count of prisoners by race, Hispanic origin, and sex, NCRP individual-level data are required to give details of the cross between age, race, Hispanic origin, and sex. Additionally, BJS often receives requests for state-specific data that can only be answered with NCRP data.
In 2011, BJS and its data collection agent began linking prison admission, year-end custody, and release records across years in states for which the prisoner identifiers had been shown to be unique and consistent. A number of variables are collected on all 3 record types, including date and type of prison admission, date of birth, sex, race, Hispanic origin, offense, and sentencing information. These additional variables allow BJS to verify that a prison release record from 2011 and year-end custody records from 2009 and 2010 belong to the same individual who had an admission record from 2009 and that the offender had not been released and reoffended during the interim.
The linked records form prison “terms,” with 1 term record for each stay an offender had in prison. Multiple term records for the same prisoner are organized in term histories, which can be used to show recidivism within state prisons. The addition of PCCS entry records in 2012 allowed BJS to construct PCCS terms and, in states where the departments of corrections administer both institutional and community corrections, the entire penalty served can be observed in the NCRP. Some states have retroactively been able to report on this data back to 2000 allowing for even longer term records.
The longitudinal nature of the NCRP collection allows BJS to describe and explain changes in the size and composition of state prison populations, and the transition between incarceration, community corrections, and release into the general community. The NCRP is the only national database that can inform these issues in depth.
Analysis of NCRP data over time can document changes in the age structure, racial/ethnic composition, and sentenced offense profile of prison admissions, prison releases, prison stock population, and post-custody supervision population. These changes, in relation to other demographics and characteristics, are impossible to describe with only aggregate counts of these populations. The NCRP data is available at National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD).
The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (see Appendix A), authorizes BJS to compile data on state and federal admissions to prison, releases from prison, and entries and discharges from PCCS. Under 34 U.S. Code § 10231, BJS collects NCRP data for statistical purposes only, does not release data pertaining to specific individuals in the NCRP, and has procedures in place to guard against disclosure of personally identifiable information. NCRP data are maintained under the security provisions outlined in U.S. Department of Justice regulation 28 CFR §22.23, which can be reviewed at https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/bjsmpc.pdf.
BJS uses the NCRP to generate statistics to help understand changes in the composition of prison populations. NCRP allows BJS to accurately describe the age, race, sex, Hispanic origin, and offense distributions of state prison populations. These estimates are published in the annual Prisoners bulletin, which uses data from both NPS and NCRP. 3 The NCRP data also provide population data that serve as denominators for the annual Mortality in State and Federal Prisons statistical tables. NCRP is the base dataset from which samples are drawn for BJS recidivism studies. See the most recent report on the recidivism of former prisoners released from 24 states (NCJ 256094).
BJS regularly uses NCRP data to respond to questions from state legislators, Congress, the press, and general public on issues related to corrections. NCRP data are used to show trends in demographic and offense distributions over time. Recently, the race and county sentencing variables have been of particular interest to persons in the press and the general public. BJS plans to introduce a data analysis tool with crosstabulation capabilities to encourage the use of NCRP by persons who do not wish to obtain access to the entire dataset while making all prisoner data available in a central location for ease of use. (See the online data dissemination tools section of this application.)
Previous BJS publications using NCRP data include—
Aging of the State Prison Population, 1993-2013, NCJ 248766, discussing factors that have contributed to the growing number of older offenders in state prison.
Human Trafficking Data-Collection Activities, 2020, NCJ 256001, documenting BJS efforts on collecting data related to human-trafficking offenses.
Time Served in State Prison, 2016, NCJ 252205, presents findings on the mean and median length of time served by prisoners released from state prison in 2016, as well as deaths in prison.
Time Served in State Prison, 2018, NCJ 255662, presents findings on the mean and median length of time served by prisoners released from state prison in 2018, as well as deaths in prison.
Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 34 States in 2012: A 5-year follow-up period (2012-2017), NCJ 255947, describes recidivism patterns of state prisoners released in 2012, for 5 years following release, by their demographic characteristics, commitment offense, and prior criminal history.
Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 24 States in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008–2018), NCJ 256094, describes recidivism patterns of state prisoners released in 2008, for 10 years following release.
The Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviewed BJS’s statistical programs in 2009 and identified several gaps in coverage across BJS’s corrections statistics, including (a) coverage of prisoner reentry and recidivism issues; (b) the flows and transitions of inmates in the corrections system; and (c) longitudinal datasets that cover more steps in the criminal justice system instead of cross-sectional surveys on discrete parts of the system.4 BJS has used NCRP to address these gaps in the following ways:
Expand coverage to include prisoner reentry and recidivism issues
BJS uses NCRP data as the basis for its national studies of recidivism of released prisoners, the latest of which, a 10-year update on the 2008 state prison release cohort, was released in September 2021. The NCRP data were used to draw the sample for the study and to provide information about inmates’ demographic attributes, offenses, sentences, time served, admission type, release methods, parole supervision, and additional variables that might be associated with recidivism.
The construction of prison term records from the NCRP data in most states allows BJS to identify within-state reimprisonment. This is a less complicated, burdensome, and expensive method to provide more timely information on certain aspects of recidivism compared to relying on each of the NCRP cohorts separately or asking the DOCs for their independent collection of recidivism statistics.
The NCRP term records also allow researchers to account for variations in demography, geography, and criminal justice characteristics (including time served, sentencing, and offense information) in recidivism studies. NCRP enables recidivism rates to be calculated for individuals, even if the same individual returns to prison multiple times during a follow-up period. The linkage of prison admission, year-end custody, and release records in NCRP allows BJS to follow unique individuals over an extended time frame, and make observations regarding their recidivism patterns by sex, age, race/ethnicity, offense category, or state, regardless of their year of release.
BJS is also linking NCRP with other administrative data to better understand factors that could contribute to successful reentry into the community by former inmates. Starting in 2014, BJS funded and executed an interagency agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies (CES) to link NCRP data to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Numident records, housed behind the U.S. Census Bureau’s secure firewall.5 Once linked, CES analysts group assign a personal identification key (PIK) to each inmate and delete all personal identifying information. These de-identified records can be used to link NCRP data to other federal and state datasets, including—
SSA Numident records and Death Master File (DMF)
Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services’ (CMS) health care enrollment
Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) W-2 forms and tax returns
U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) change of address file
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) federally-backed mortgage and housing assistance files
Unemployment insurance (UI) earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)
State Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) data
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) files
State Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
BJS, in conjunction with staff from CES and the NCRP data collection agent, is currently working on projects that link NCRP data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Death Index (NDI) to study post-prison mortality, HUD, and Medicaid enrollment data to describe pre- and post-prison use of federal benefit programs, and the UI wage data collected by CES through the LEHD program to measure post-prison employment. BJS is also exploring the possibility of linking NCRP records to data collected by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and CMS data on Medicaid and Medicare procedure billing.
Linking the NCRP data to other federal datasets permits BJS to address a wide range of questions about post-prison reentry and recidivism, including—
What is the rate of unemployment among former prisoners, and how long does it take before former prisoners obtain legal employment?
What is the relationship between employment and recidivism?
What is the death rate of former prisoners over time? Is there a relationship between the time spent in prison, where the inmate received health care, and the length of post-prison survival?
How mobile is the former prisoner population (interstate mobility), and how does this affect recidivism rates in each state?
How does prison release impact household income and use of federal and state benefits?
What are the health care needs of former prisoners? Can prisoners be successfully linked to care in the community to stop the spread of infectious disease and mitigate chronic conditions?
At what rate do veterans who have been imprisoned renew their relationship with the VA health care system?
What is the relationship between geography, demographics, household structure, access to health insurance, and recidivism?
Emphasize flows and transitions of inmates through the corrections system
The CNSTAT panel’s second major recommendation for BJS corrections statistics was to shift BJS’s focus away from simply providing cross-sectional population counts and towards emphasizing flows and transitions through the corrections process. The BJS report on the aging of the state prison population used admission and release records to examine differences in the flow in and out of prison between older and younger offenders.6 In 1993, almost 70% of prisoners age 55 or older had already been admitted in that age group, while only 30% were admitted age 54 or younger but had remained in prison long enough to “age in” to the 55 or older age group. By 2013, admissions of persons age 55 or older had declined to 40%, and persons aging into the oldest age category had increased to 60%, due to longer sentences and more time actually served by older offenders. These findings have implications for resource management in correctional systems, including planning for future needs in bed space, security personnel, and medical care.
Additional BJS reports on time served in state prisons describes mean and median length of time served by most serious offense and percentage of sentence served by offense before initial release from state prison.7 State prisoners serving time for rape who were initially released in 2018 served an average of 68% of their sentences, and those serving time for murder served an average of 58% of their sentences. For all offenses, persons released from state prison in 2018 served an average of 44% of their maximum sentence before initial release.
NCRP term records have shed new light on the calculation of time actually served in prison. Time served from admission to release is of critical importance to understanding how prison populations grow and for understanding the impact of sentencing reforms on prison populations. Most commonly, time served is measured by those released from prison, that is, time served by a release cohort. This measure is useful for some purposes—such as assessing the impacts of time served on recidivism—but it is not useful for other purposes, such as assessing the impacts of sentencing reforms on the severity of punishment, or for forecasting prison populations.
To assess the impacts of sentencing reforms on the severity of punishment, time served needs to be associated with the admissions cohorts at time T and subsequent periods. For example, if a sentencing reform is implemented at time T, time served by release cohorts would not provide good measures of the impacts of the reform as the release cohorts consist of a mixture of admissions cohorts, many of whom entered prior to T.
The PCCS term records can inform policymakers about the movement of released prisoners into post-custody supervision programs. By linking the prison and PCCS terms in NCRP, BJS can make statements about the characteristics of persons who succeed or fail under community supervision, and examine the balance of sentence time served in prison versus in the community. As states attempt to reduce the costs of incarceration, this ratio of prison time to PCCS time may change, and can now be captured by NCRP in many states.
Develop and enhance longitudinal datasets to encompass more steps in the criminal justice system
Since BJS has focused on recreating the NCRP as a longitudinal dataset as opposed to single year snapshots of the prison population, many states have offered to provide older data to fill gaps in participation. The Georgia DOC provided the components for prison term records back to 1971. Arizona, submitted NCRP data for the first time in 2012, providing records back to 2000. Seven states have used unique identifiers for several decades, which allows BJS to create term records from their data back into the 1990s. These efforts have resulted in the creation of prison term records for 20-25 years for 18 states, including California, New York, Illinois, and Florida. This data set allows researchers to perform long-term comparisons for almost half of the nation’s state prison population.
As previously noted, BJS is actively engaging other federal agencies to link NCRP with non-criminal justice databases in the interest of learning about barriers to successful reentry into the community. This would extend the longitudinal reach of NCRP to better address contributing causes to recidivism.
As state participation in NCRP has increased and the data have become more useful through the construction of term records, so has interest in using the data for research purposes. BJS makes the NCRP data set available to the public through restricted use files located at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data Archive (NACJD) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/series/38). Researchers are required to write a short justification describing their intended use of the data, provide a data security plan, and obtain approval or a waiver from an official Institutional Review Board. Over the past 3 years, there were almost 2,000 downloads of the restricted file documentation, and 20 unique persons were granted access to the NCRP data .
Starting in 2015, BJS made access to the NCRP data easier by releasing unrestricted files with limited variables. These annual files allow researchers and the public to perform analysis to get basic crosstabulations of age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, major offense category, and aggregated time served and sentence lengths by state. These files have proven to be popular, over the past 3 years, there were almost 4,000 instances in which the data or documentation were downloaded. The public-use dataset includes selected variables by state for 1991-2019.
BJS found a total of over 20 published uses of the NCRP data over the past 3 years, with most researchers using age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, offense, types of admission and release, and sentence length variables in their analyses. For example, the Vera Institute of Justice published a county-level interactive map tool for people to view prison incarceration rates over time. Additionally, they used NCRP data to provide state fact sheets on incarceration trends over time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Marshall Project used NCRP data in an article examining why the prison population is so vulnerable to COVID-19. These articles and additional uses of the NCRP data by policy organizations, academics, and media personnel for the past 3 years are listed at the end of Appendix B.
State DOCs provide electronic data sets extracted from correctional resource management systems. Most participating states provide data on an annual basis, allowing them to use existing computer extraction programs with very minor alterations. Through technical assistance, BJS staff has worked with states to develop these programs, as well as update them when the states migrate to new information technology systems or database management software packages. The files are encrypted and uploaded to BJS’s dedicated, password-protected NCRP file transfer protocol (FTP) server. Secure FTP was first implemented in January 2009 for use in collecting 2008 NCRP data files, and continues to be used by all NCRP respondents. The site is compliant with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3, and meets all the requirements of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) and the Privacy Act.
BJS provides respondents with technical assistance as needed to minimize respondents’ efforts in data collection and to improve data quality. In addition, BJS accepts NCRP data in any file format, and standardizes state data to BJS definitions if provided with state documentation. BJS staff recode state statutes and other offense codes to standard BJS codes which significantly reduces the burden on participating jurisdictions. BJS has developed quality control protocols that provide quick identification of out-of-range data values, identify abnormally high rates of missing data, and compare the current year’s data to previous years’ (if available) to ensure that large changes in the variable-specific and total number of data submitted can be explained by the state data providers. Rapid processing and quality control of the data results in reduced burden for states since any discrepancies can be immediately addressed.
NCRP is not duplicated by any other federal agency. BJS is the only government agency that collects national-level data on sentencing, time served in prison and on PCCS, and offense composition for prison admissions, releases, and offenders in the custody of state prisons at year-end.
Similar data are collected by Appriss as part of the JusticeXchange database (https://apprissinsights.com/solutions/justicexchange/). JusticeXchange grew out of the Victim Information and Notification Everyday (VINE) program (https://apprissinsights.com/solutions/vine/) to notify victims when an offender has additional interactions with the criminal justice system. The collection consists of individual-level movements of offenders in and out of local jails and 35 state DOCs that are updated on a daily, or even hourly basis. The DOC data, however, are highly variable in their completeness for sentencing, offense, type of admission and release, education, and state or federal fingerprint IDs, with more than half of the state DOC records missing values for these items. Appriss data also lack date of release for many of the DOC records, which limits their use in calculating time served in prison, and the data do not include PCCS information. BJS explored the use of Appriss data to improve its understanding of jail inmates starting in 2015, but found extensive data quality and completeness limitations and decided not to replace the statistics currently obtained from BJS’s jails collections.
BJS’s NPS and Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole (ASPP) (OMB Control No. 1121-0064, expires 09/30/2023) obtain aggregate counts on admissions to and releases from state prisons, probation and parole programs, as well as year-end stock populations, and some demographic data. These aggregate counts serve as the official counts of prisoners, and people on probation and parole. They are also used as control totals for weighting when calculating subnational estimates. More detailed disaggregation of the populations, such as racial differences in time served on parole or changes in offense distribution by age groups over time, requires NCRP individual-level data.
Not applicable. The NCRP data collection does not involve small businesses or other small entities. The respondents are state DOCs.
Given the enhancements achieved by creating term records, less frequent collection of NCRP would greatly limit BJS’s capability to measure changes in prison populations, assess recidivism and reentry issues, enhance linkage of records to expand coverage of key issues related to prison populations, and measure transitions between stages of the correctional system. Less frequent collection would limit BJS’s ability to regularly report measures of change in sex, race, Hispanic origin, age, and offense (and cross-classifications across these groups) of prison populations, and limit BJS’s ability to weight or generate annual estimates of these characteristics. 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’s and other researchers’ ability to detect changes in sentencing practice that affect prison populations.
Less frequent data collection would impose more burden on respondents who have set up computerized methods to generate NCRP data. In some states, data on admissions to and releases from prison are updated in real time. Some states are only able to provide records for those prisoners being admitted or released for the most recent twelve months.
Not applicable. The NCRP collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6
The NCRP collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6. The 60-day notice for public commentary was published in the Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 131, page 36773 on Tuesday, July 13, 2021. The 30-day notice for public commentary was published in the Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 179, page 52207, on September 20, 2021.
BJS received zero comments to the 60-day Federal Register notice for the NCRP.
Not applicable. No payments or gifts are offered to NCRP respondents.
Under Title 34 of the United States Code, Section 10231, BJS collects NCRP data for statistical purposes only, does not release data pertaining to specific individuals in the NCRP, and has procedures in place to guard against disclosure of personally identifiable information. NCRP data are maintained under the security provisions outlined in U.S. Department of Justice regulation 28 CFR §22.23, which can be reviewed in Appendix D or https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/BJS_Data_Protection_Guidelines.pdf. All data collection agent staff working on the NCRP sign the following privacy certificate each year: https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/bjsmpc.pdf.
Not applicable.
There are 56 respondents in the NCRP data collection universe including the DOC in each of the 50 states, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) for the District of Columbia, and 5 different contacts for parole data in states where the DOC does not keep data on people on parole (Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, and South Carolina). Data on federal prison inmates are obtained through BJS’s Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP), so no burden is placed on the Bureau of Prisons for NCRP.
The costs to respondents incurred as a result of participating in this data collection would be incurred in the normal course of daily operations, except for the hours involved in preparing the data. All states developed computer programs to extract data during their initial participation in NCRP. These computer programs are then re-run to prepare data for submission in subsequent years. Burden hours for the 3 collection years (2022—2024) differ based on whether a state has previously submitted NCRP prison and PCCS data in recent years. All 50 DOCs have recently submitted NCRP prison data, but currently a maximum of 35 DOCs have submitted PCCS admissions data and 34 DOCs have submitted PCCS release data in the last 4 years. BJS estimates of burden are derived from discussions with both current and potential contributors to the NCRP.
At the beginning of each year, states are contacted by BJS’s data collection agent with an email to confirm that the data respondent has not changed over the past year and to tell them to expect a packet of materials describing the submission of NCRP data in the next few weeks (Appendix G). In 2022, the packet for collection of the 2021 NCRP data will contain an introductory letter from BJS (Appendix F), instructions for data submission (Appendix H), and an NCRP Frequently Asked Questions fact sheet (Appendix I).
All 50 DOCs have recently submitted NCRP prison data, so the average time needed to continue providing prison data is expected to be 8 hours per respondent for prisoner admissions and releases (NCRP-1A and NCRP-1B) and 8 hours for data on persons in prison at year-end (NCRP-1D) based on conversations with data providers during follow-up calls. The average of 8 hours per respondent considers that some respondents need just 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.
In 2022—2024, BJS expects to have all 50 DOCs providing NCRP prison data. The burden for provision of the NCRP data will remain at the 2021 level of 14 hours per respondent as the survey is not changing for this approval, for a total of 700 hours annually for the 50 DOCs in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
There are currently 40 jurisdictions submitting PCCS data (35 DOCs and 5 parole supervising agencies), and BJS estimates that extraction and submission of both the PCCS entries and exits takes an average of 8 hours per jurisdiction. In 2022—2024, BJS hopes to recruit an additional 5 jurisdictions to submit NCRP PCCS data. For those 40 supervising agencies currently responding, provision of the PCCS data in 2022—2024 will total 320 hours (8 hours*40 = 320 hours) annually. The total estimate for submission of PCCS for new jurisdictions in 2022—2024 is 120 hours (24 hours*5 = 120 hours). For new agencies, BJS assumes the initial submission will take about 3 times longer than established reporters to account for programming, questions, and submission. The total amount of time for all PCCS submissions annually is 440 hours.
Follow-up consultations with respondents are usually necessary while processing the data to verify information regarding the definition, completeness, and accuracy of their report. The duration of these follow-up consultations will vary based on the number of record types submitted, as such, BJS has estimated an average of 3 hours per jurisdiction to cover all of the records (prison and/or PCCS) submitted. In 2022, BJS anticipates that 1 of the 2 parole supervising agencies not currently submitting PCCS data will begin to submit, so the number of jurisdictions requiring follow-up consultations is 51 (50 DOCs submitting at least the prison data, and 1 parole supervising agency submitting only PCCS data). This yields a total of 153 hours of follow-up consultation after submission. This total estimate of 153 hours for data review/follow-up consultations remains the same for 2023 and 2024.
BJS anticipates that the total annual burden for provision of all NCRP data across the jurisdictions will participate in 2022—2024 is anticipated to be 1,293 hours (700 hours for prison records, 440 hours for PCCS records, and 153 hours for follow-up consultation), or 25 hours per respondent.
Table 1. Annual estimated time burden for states submitting NCRP data in 2022—2024 (report year 2021—2023)
SUBMISSIONS |
FILES |
Data reviewc,d |
TOTAL
|
|||||
Prison data |
PCCS dataa,b |
|||||||
NCRP-1A |
NCRP-1B |
NCRP-1D |
NCRP-1E |
NCRP-1F |
||||
Total annual submissions and burden in 2022—2024 (report years 2021—2023) |
1,293 hoursd |
|||||||
Number of states |
50 |
50 |
50 |
51 |
51 |
51 |
||
|
50 |
50 |
50 |
45 |
45 |
50 |
||
|
0 |
0 |
0 |
6 |
6 |
6 |
||
Estimated total burden |
700 hours |
440 hours |
153 hoursb,d |
|||||
aWhile there are 50 states providing prison data, 51 jurisdictions are eligible to report PCCS data. As of December 31, 2001, sentenced felons from the District of Columbia are the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The District of Columbia’s PCCS data, however, are reported by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA).
bIn 5 states and the District of Columbia, a different respondent reports data for NCRP-1E and NCRP-1F (PCCS entry and exit records). Currently, 5 of these 6 jurisdictions submit PCCS data on an annual basis to NCRP. The estimated burden for data review is still assumed to be 3 total hours per NCRP submission, even though 2 different people in these jurisdictions will separately review the PCCS records (2 files) and the prison records (3 files). For the District of Columbia, the respondent will review only 2 files in 3 hours.
cThe number of states, respondents, and burden hours in the data review column subtotals will not sum to the total submissions and burden hours, since these values reflect the maximum number of states and respondents that will need to review at least 1 submitted file of NCRP.
dThe estimated total burden for all 2021 submissions will not be the sum of the estimated subtotals of states currently and not currently submitting NCRP records because of the data review estimate issue described above.
The costs to respondents incurred as a result of participating in this data collection would be incurred in the normal course of daily operations. Assuming a pay rate approximately equivalent to the GS-12 / 01 level ($87,198 per year), the estimated agency cost of employee time would be approximately $41.92 per hour. Fifty-one agencies will be asked to participate in this activity for 25 hours in 2022—2024, therefore the total annual cost is estimated at $53,448, or $1,048 per agency.
The estimated costs for collection, processing, and dissemination of the NCRP data in 2022 is $1,050,959, including:
$899,959 — Abt Associates, Inc. (NCRP data collection agent)
$561,999 for data collection, processing, assembly, and delivery
$281,070 for special studies, research, and web tools
$56,890 in management and meetings
$151,000 — Bureau of Justice Statistics
60% GS-13, Statistician ($70,000)
3% GS-15, Supervisory Statistician ($5,000)
5% GS-13 Editor ($6,000)
Other editorial staff ($10,000)
Front office staff (GS-15, SES, Director) ($5,000)
Fringe benefits (@28% of salaries -- $25,000)
Other administrative costs (@30% of salary & fringe $30,000)
The burden of 1,293 will remain the same as the previously OMB approved 2020 collection as BJS is not requesting any revisions to the collection.
BJS’s plans for products and publications from NCRP data over the next 3 years fall into 4 broad categories:
BJS bulletins provide the “first cut” from a routine statistical data collection. BJS will use the NCRP to augment data from NPS to report annually on changes in the age, sex, race, and offense composition of the prison population at year-end; prison admissions during the year; prison releases during the year; and expected time served upon admission. BJS will use NCRP data in the production of 3 annual bulletins that are issued from the NPS data collection:
Prisoners in 2021 (expected release: end-of-year 2022)
Prisoners in 2022 (expected release: end-of-year 2023)
Prisoners in 2023 (expected release: end-of-year 2024)
The NCRP age, sex, and race data are used to estimate the demographic distribution of state prisoners in the Correctional Population in the United States bulletins:
Correctional Population in the United States, 2021 (expected release: end-of-year 2022)
Correctional Population in the United States, 2022 (expected release: end-of-year 2023)
Correctional Population in the United States, 2023 (expected release: end-of-year 2024)
Finally, BJS intends to publish estimates of sentence length and time served by most serious offense at the national level on an annual basis:
Time Served and Sentence Length for State Prisoners, by Offense, 2020 (expected release: 2022)
Time Served and Sentence Length for State Prisoners, by Offense, 2022 (expected release: 2024)
Topics of special interest include the following:
Employment of released prisoners: Relying on the matched NCRP-LEHD datasets, BJS and the Census Bureau are planning a joint report looking at the employment rate of former prisoners, as well as the types of jobs they work and the time between prison release and employment. The rate of return to prison will also be examined by whether a person is employed or not.
Recidivism of persons admitted in 2018—for the first time, BJS will examine recidivism of all persons admitted in a given year.
Recidivism of persons released from state prison in 2016—this is a follow-up to a report on recidivism of state prisoners last released in 2012. This report will contain more states and provide 3- and 5-year recidivism rates for re-arrest, reconviction, and return to prison.
The Corrections Statistical Analysis Tool (CSAT-Prisoners) (http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=nps) includes data from NCRP. The tool has both dynamic table-building capabilities and static “quick tables” that allow users to download longitudinal trend data for standard measures (year-end population, admissions, releases, etc.) by sex and state from 1978—2019. BJS updates this tool annually, and it is widely used by the media, students, and researchers to provide answers to routine requests for counts of prison populations and estimates of characteristics of the prison population. BJS expects to release an updated tool that includes the NCRP public use file data. This tool has advanced queries with cross-tabulations of data as well as map tools showing population and rates by state for 1978—2019. This data tool will combine the functionality of the existing NPS Prisoners tool with the public use NCRP data file incorporating individual level data aggregated to the state level.
The NCRP data are archived at NACJD. Researchers who obtain access to the restricted use data can download all records from 2000 to the currently archived year in 4 files: prison term records for those states with records that enabled linkage, unlinked prison records for the states and years where linkage was not possible, PCCS term records, and unlinked PCCS records for states where linkage wasn’t possible. The 4 files are updated annually as new states submit data and new links are formed in the term records. BJS has extensive documentation to guide users, and provides programs in SAS, SPSS, and STATA.
BJS has also created an annual abbreviated version of the NCRP prison data at NACJD that is fully accessible to the public. This dataset includes some demographic information (sex, a combination of the race and Hispanic ethnicity variables, calculated age in 10-year intervals, and education level), as well as most serious offense collapsed into the standard BJS categories (violent, property, drug, public order, other), sentence length and time served divided into intervals, high level categories of type of admission and release, and the state where the inmate is being held, admitted, or released. This dataset makes NCRP data widely available to users who want to answer simple questions about the state prison system, or who don’t need the full complement of NCRP variables to answer their questions.
The OMB Control Number and the expiration date will be published on instructions provided to all respondents.
There are no exceptions to the Certification Statement. The collection is consistent with all the guidelines set forth in 5 CFR 1320.9.
1 Buehler E. (2021). Justice Expenditures and Employment in the United States, 2017. Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 256093, https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/jeeus17.pdf.
2 Cindy Reed, Maris Mapolski, Ram Subramanian, Alice Chasan, and Karina Schroeder, The State of Justice Reform 2018 (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2019). https://www.vera.org/state-of-justice-reform/2018
3 See, for example Prisoners in 2019 (NCJ 255115), tables 9 and 10 for NCRP data used to show the sex, race, and age distributions of prisoners, and tables 14 and 15 for the state offense distributions. Earlier reports in the Prisoners publication series also show these tables, as well as incorporating NCRP data in estimates of time served by offense, sentence length by admission type, and in-depth analyses of state policy initiatives.
4 National Research Council (2009). Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12671/ensuring-the-quality-credibility-and-relevance-of-us-justice-statistics.
5 Information about the CES is available at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ces.html.
6 Carson E.A. and Sabol W.J. (2016). Aging of the State Prison Population, 1993-2013. Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 248766, https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/aging-state-prison-population-1993-2013.
7 Kaeble, D. (2021) Time Served in State Prison, 2018. Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 255662 https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/time-served-state-prison-2018.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Ann |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-10-04 |