Can We Unify Criminal Justice Data, Like the Dutch and the Nordics?

• In Event: Crime Data for the Future

Abstract

Criminal justice research often turns to northern European countries where a high quality registry data gives researchers a complete and integrated view of criminal activity in the broader context of family, employment, health and mobility.  This talk describes a new data infrastructure project in the United States, titled the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS), that seeks to rival Dutch and Nordic data. CJARS, a collaboration between University of Michigan and the U.S. Census Bureau, aims to create a national research data repository that will track all criminal episodes in the United States at the individual level from arrest to completed sanction.  To build the repository, CJARS is collecting and harmonizing administrative data on arrests, legal proceedings, and sanctions (including prison and jail records) from state and local agencies. The resulting product will be linkable with individual-level social, economic, and demographic information held at the U.S. Census Bureau and accessible to the broader research community through the Federal Statistical Research Data Center network.

Author

• Michael Mueller-Smith, University of Michigan