Using Federal Linked Data to Identify and Analyze Indian Country Offender across Stages of the Federal Criminal Justice System

• In Event: Linking Administrative Data from the BJS’ Federal Justice Statistics Program

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of Indian Country offenders processed through the stages of the federal criminal justice system that uses administrative data from the federal criminal justice agencies available through BJS’ Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP). Since the administrative data systems maintained by the federal justice agencies generally do not include good indicators of crimes committed on Indian lands, identifying these offenders in the data is challenging. We therefore developed a multi-method approach for identifying Indian Country offenders that started with using geographical data on place of arrest (to determine whether the arrest occurred on Indian Reservations), which was augmented by utilizing other available indicators in the FJSP data, such as investigative agency (BIA), U.S. Attorneys’ program categories, and other offense-based variables. Such an approach required linking records across stages/agency data systems to build our analytic cohort of Indian Country offenders, which was possible through the FJSP dyad link system. We present information on the size, composition, and case processing outcomes of Indian Country offenders across all stages of the federal justice system, including arrest/investigation, prosecution, adjudication, sentencing, and corrections.

Authors

• Debbie Mayer, Urban Institute

• William Adams, Urban Institute