Supporting Statement - PART A - Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities Survey - April 2014

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

1. JUSTIFICATION

1. Necessity of Information Collection

Little is known about basic elements of correctional officer (CO) use of body armor, such as the proportion who have body armor, the rates of use, the decision-making factors which inform use, and the effects of institutional policies on use rates. In contrast, the impact of body armor use among police officers to reduce death and injury has been documented over several decades since the widespread adoption of soft body armor as personal protective equipment in the 1970s (Grant, Kubu, Taylor, Roberts, Collins, and Woods, 2012; Tompkins, 2006). The threats faced by COs and police officers differ, which may motivate different practices and policies regarding body armor use. COs overwhelmingly face threats due to stab, slash, and spike attacks due to improvised weapons inside facilities while police officers face a spectrum of physical threats on the street including ballistic threats due to firearms. The potential for danger within prison environments and the individual officer and institutional benefits that may be missed when body armor is not worn suggest an analogous understanding of body armor use could have a great impact on the occupational health of correctional staff as similar research has demonstrated for police officers.

The proposed collection of information, the Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities Survey, will provide the first national-level estimates of body armor use by COs within state and federal correctional facilities and will identify key barriers to the use of armor for the purpose of developing approaches to overcome those barriers. No empirical data is available in the published literature on the context of using armor in correctional settings, including the types of armor in use, variations in needs across different CO personnel, training on proper use and maintenance of armor, and appropriate times for using or not using armor. The Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities Survey is composed of a pair of questionnaires. Both a short facility-level survey, the Facility Survey (Attachment 1), and a short correctional officer-level survey, the Correctional Officer Survey (Attachment 2), will be conducted with samples drawn using probability-based sampling strategies. The two proposed collections of information will be used to measure macro-level issues regarding body armor that occur at the facility level and measure the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of individual correctional officers regarding body armor.

In line with a core mission objective to improve the criminal justice system, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) proposes this collection of information to provide timely information regarding the extent that COs use body armor and the situational contexts in which a CO has or has not used armor. The Correctional Officer Survey will include additional questions on officer physical and mental health, a greatly understudied area, which provides context for officers’ decisions to use body armor or not under different conditions.

The specific research questions are:

1. What factors are considered in the decision making process to wear (or not wear) body armor in a correctional setting?

2. How does risk perception and assessment impact the decision to wear (or not wear) body armor in a correctional setting?

3. What other factors such as (1) personal characteristics of COs, (2) characteristics of the body armor itself, (3) the knowledge and attitudes of the COs, (4) contextual characteristics, (5) elements of the facility and related characteristics, and (6) facility policy and practices impact the use of body armor by COs?

Given the dearth of research in this area and the exploratory nature of this study, we have not set forth directional hypotheses, for there is too little research with this population to form hypotheses. Rather, this study will form the basis for future studies to develop testable hypotheses. This is foundational work that is necessary to move the field of correctional officer safety forward. The result of the collection of information will provide data to better understand officer safety within correctional environments. It will also help shape strategic planning at all levels of government to support research, development, testing, and evaluation of tools and technology; training; and other forms of investment for Federal, State, local, and tribal correctional agencies regarding body armor use. NIJ is authorized to pursue this activity by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Street Act of 1968, as amended (42 U.S.C. 3722), which provides for NIJ to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system.

As a consequence of this proposed collection of information, NIJ is authorized to make recommendations for action which can be taken by Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and by private persons and organizations to improve and strengthen criminal and civil justice systems. NIJ is also authorized to engage in research and evaluation to understand technology used within the criminal justice system that is designed to promote better functioning of the system, which includes critical technology and equipment that to ensures officer safety. The results of this proposed collection of information and follow-on analysis will better inform strategies to improve officer safety in correctional environments by identifying barriers to body armor use and developing approaches to address them, potentially reducing injury and death of COs. The potential benefits associated with the proposed collections of information outweigh the burden given the widespread impact of this study for nearly 2,000 correctional facilities nationwide.

The Office of Science and Technology (OST) within NIJ is authorized by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 162) to work with other entities within the Department of Justice, other Federal agencies, and the Executive Office of the President to establish a coordinated Federal approach on issues related to law enforcement technology including body armor. Furthermore, OST is authorized to carry out research, development, testing, evaluation (RDT&E), and cost-benefit analyses in fields that would improve the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of law enforcement technologies used by Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies, including personal protective equipment such as body armor which improves officer safety.

2. Needs and Uses

The proposed data collection is motivated in response to the identified need for the first national-level estimates of body armor use by COs within state and federal correctional facilities. Through cooperative agreement 2011-IJ-CX-K056 with NIJ, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago will conduct the collection of information and provide the initial research products from the data. The goal of this present study is to identify key barriers to the use of armor and to develop approaches to overcome those barriers.

A review of the literature revealed little prior research regarding COs’ use of body armor and policies relevant to body armor in correctional facilities. Based on earlier research with police officers, in addition to safety-related concerns, COs face significant and pressing health issues in working in a custodial environment that potentially may play a role in their use of body armor. Preliminary research indicates a relationship between the physical and mental health of police officers and their use of body armor that will be explored with COs (Taylor, Mumford, Kubu, and Woods, 2013). Comparative risks may reduce the perceived risk of assault with a weapon during a CO’s work. For example, if COs have strong concerns about competing risks on the job, such as exposure to disease , these concerns may supersede or displace concerns about assaults, although there is some evidence that the reverse may be true: “dangerousness” was the greatest concern in a study of nine facilities in central Florida . Furthermore, there is an absence of research on the decision-making process used by correctional personnel on using or not using body armor. In some instances, policies may be mandatory, eliciting rule-based behavior, (i.e., COs’ regular use of body armor). In other cases, the policies may be lax or nonexistent such that COs make their own behavioral choices, engaging in risk assessment and rational decision making.

Despite decades of experience regarding body armor use by law enforcement to reduce police officer deaths and injuries, many questions remain unanswered with respect to the use of body armor by correctional personnel. The proposed collection of information will provide an avenue for COs to provide feedback, will reveal when body armor is used, when it is not used, and COs’ reasons and decision-making processes governing their determination to wear (or not to wear) body armor. This data will inform recommendations regarding body armor usage policies as well as enhanced guidelines for storage, maintenance, replacement, fitting, and other potential concerns identified by COs that would limit their use of armor. Through our analysis of the results, policymakers and body armor manufacturers can be informed on critical issues that need to be considered concerning body armor use in correctional settings.

Users of NIJ Data on Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities

A wide variety of stakeholders in Federal, State, local, and tribal government administration, criminal justice operations, and legislative bodies will be able to use the data collected to understand the barriers to body armor use in correctional settings to help guide decision making going forward. The beneficiaries of this information include NIJ, who is supporting this effort, as well as other Federal Executive Branch agencies, U.S. Congress, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and State, local, and tribal counterparts. Body armor manufacturers and researchers in academia will also gain a clearer understanding of body armor use and officer safety. Examples of users and uses of these data include the following:

U.S. Congress—Congress provides support to NIJ to perform functions related to criminal justice system research, development, and evaluation. Developing a rich and full understanding of body armor use by correctional personnel is directly related to that goal. This survey and analysis of the data can be used to inform Congress to provide a better sense of what sort of Federal support might be required to improve officer safety.

National Institute of Justice—NIJ will be a primary consumer of the information provided by the proposed data collection to help identify research priorities pertaining to body armor as it continually updates priorities for RDT&E and other investments. NIJ maintains a primary emphasis on the needs and requirements of Federal, state, local and tribal criminal justice systems in how it prioritizes a balance between basic and applied research to support improved outcomes for practitioners.

To meet the operational challenges encountered by criminal justice practitioners, NIJ seeks input and information from representative stakeholders across the criminal justice enterprise. This material is used in part to determine technological gaps which can benefit from investment in RDT&E or other activities. NIJ has well-established programs in body armor and institutional corrections which are the primary program areas that will scrutinize the information provided by the proposed data collection. NIJ regularly releases competitive solicitations that address identified gaps from which Cooperative Agreements are generally awarded after peer review of applications to performers who provide innovative proposals that address the requirements identified in the solicitations.

Federal, state, local, and tribal correctional institutions—While Federal and state correctional institutions are the respondents of the proposed collection of information, corrections administrators at all levels of government would benefit from the information provided by the survey. These data will be directly used by correctional executives throughout the nation at the Federal level (Federal Bureau of Prisons), state level (Departments of Corrections for all the states), and local levels (e.g., Sheriff’s Offices and other law enforcement agencies responsible for corrections). Administrators and policymakers will have rigorous data to promote CO safety concerns (e.g., documenting the frequency of body armor use and whether inconsistent use is due to lack of availability, the presence of few policies, design problems with the armor for CO use, etc.). The results will support efforts to address barriers to use (e.g., implementing mandatory wear policies or facilitating the provision of well-fitting temporary or permanent replacement armor as needed).

State and local law enforcement agencies—Law enforcement and public safety agencies that maintain detention facilities would also benefit from the information provided by the survey which will yield a better understanding the current state of officer safety.

State legislatures, municipal councils, and city and county managers—Policymakers and budget planners would also benefit from the information provided by the survey. Body armor use can be influenced by both policy and technology, and any improvements suggested by the survey data will require close assessment by State and local government bodies to coordinate efforts to improve officer safety.

Office of Justice Programs—Components in OJP other than NIJ could benefit from the information provided by the survey. The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) provides support at the state, local, and tribal levels to improve the criminal justice system. BJA provides national leadership in criminal justice policy, training, and technical assistance to further the administration of justice and coordinates and administers all state and local grant programs. BJA also administers the “Bulletproof Vest Partnership” (BVP) program that provides support to law enforcement agencies to purchase body armor. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) can utilize the data in the context of the statistics it collects to better understand the criminal justice system. The results of this survey will provide baseline input for analysis and improvement of officer safety over time.

Various stakeholders in industry and academia—The proposed collection of information will help body armor manufacturers by reducing their research and developments costs and informing them on any design issues that might be affecting the use of body armor. The data and resulting analysis will fill also a void in the research literature on body armor and correctional facilities and would be of great use to researchers in the academic and non-profit communities. Recommendations from research stemming from the data collection will be disseminated to the field in the form of a publicly available report. Ultimately, these recommendations can be used by the field to increase the use of body armor by COs through the changing of facility policies to require the use of body armor. Such changes may lead to fewer injuries within correctional facilities due to increased body armor use. The analysis will also be of use to administrators and health professionals working in correctional facilities by identifying key gaps in our understanding of how COs’ physical and mental health issues affect their perspective and decisions regarding use of body armor.

Proposed Survey Instruments

The Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities Survey is composed of a pair of questionnaires. Both a short facility-level survey (to be completed by one representative from each of the 130 sampled facilities in the study) and a short correctional officer-level survey will be administered.

Facility Survey

This survey includes 47 questions broken into five sections for knowledgeable administrators from a nationally representative sample of facilities to complete on the use, care, and maintenance of body armor by correctional officers. These questions include items at the facility level and items that individual officers are not in a good position to answer regarding mostly facts about the facility.

Section 1: Facility Overview

This section contains four questions about the facility regarding the number of personnel in the facility and union membership.

Section 2: Body Armor Usage

This section contains four questions on the prevalence of officer use of bullet-resistant and stab-resistant body armor and reasons for not using armor.

Section 3: Body Armor Standards & Policies

This section contains eleven questions that cover the use of performance standards for body armor purchasing, the presence of policies requiring officers to wear body armor by officer position and threat level, and the use of disciplinary policies when an officer does not wear body armor when required to do so.

Section 4: Selection, Fit, Training, & Maintenance

This section contains twenty questions that cover methods for obtaining body armor; use of internal or external carriers for body armor; procedures and personnel for assessing the fit of officers’ body armor; the frequency of inspections to ensure that officers' body armor fits properly; training on body armor on benefits/limits, care and maintenance, use of record-keeping system for keeping track of body armor in the facility; replacement policies for body armor; availability and logistics of replacement body armor for emergencies or when an officer is awaiting new body armor; and important factors related to the purchasing of body armor.

Section 5: Officer Assault History

This section contains twelve questions that cover the number of officers from your facility assaulted in the line of duty; the number of officers assaulted by weapons (in general, by edged and spiked weapons, and by firearms); number of officers injured by weapons; and the number of officers injured by assault with a weapon that were wearing body armor (separate questions for stab-resistant and bullet-resistant body armor and for edged weapons, spiked weapons, and firearms); and duty-related injuries or illnesses due to a series of hazards. Our question asks about the portion (if any) of federal funding used for body armor purchasing for the facility.

Correctional Officer Survey

This survey includes 91 questions for a representative sample of correctional officers from across the U.S. to complete on the use, care and maintenance of body armor used in the line of duty. The officers would be chosen randomly from the selected facilities in the early stage of the collection of

These questions include items where we are capturing the knowledge, attitude and behavior of individual correctional officers regarding body armor something that one staff member in a facility cannot accurately report (we need to collection this information directly from each sampled officer).

Section 1: Background

This section covers mostly demographic items describing characteristics of the officers such as gender, marital status, education, ethnicity, and physical and mental health status. These items are reliable, standardized questions selected by a panel of clinical and public health experts to support quality survey research. All items have been fielded in self-administered questionnaires. The source information for each is documented on the NIH website (https://www.phenxtoolkit.org/) and the process is documented in the following publication:

Hamilton CM, Strader LC, Pratt JG, et al.: The PhenX Toolkit: Get the Most From Your Measures. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2011, 174:253-260.

Section 2: Employment

This section covers items on their current rank as an officer, years of correctional officer experience, years of military service, a description of their current duty assignment and location, and amount of contact with inmates during a work shift.

Section 3: Body Armor Use

This section covers items on whether the officer wears body armor, current access and use of armor, and reasons why they do not use armor (if applicable).

Section 4: Protection/Protective Capabilities of Bullet-Resistant Armor

This section asks specific questions on the use of bullet-resistant body armor and what type (i.e., level of bullet-resistant body armor, type of carrier for the armor, use of front and back ballistic panels, use of trauma/ballistic plates).

Section 5: Protection/Protective Capabilities of Stab-Resistant Armor

This section asks specific questions on the use of stab-resistant armor similar in nature to section four. The remaining questions on this survey refer to the body armor most often worn by the officer (either stab-resistant or bullet-resistant armor). Some perception questions follow about their most used armor regarding its fit and comfort, why they wear body armor, and specific instances in their body armor protected them.

Section 6: Facility Body Armor Policy

This section asks specific questions on supervisory encouragement for use of body armor, the officers’ understanding of any facility requirements to wear body armor, whether they follow that policy and any discipline they have received for not following that policy.

Section 7: Selection/Acquisition

This section asks specific questions on how they obtained their body armor (if they bought it themselves we ask them about what factors were important in selecting their body armor), whether they were fitted for the armor and who did the fitting, and whether their body armor fit has been re-checked.

Section 8: Maintenance, Training, and Inspection

This section asks specific questions on the officers’ storage of their body armor, cleaning of their body armor carrier, body armor education and training, and availability of temporary replacement body armor in their facility.

Section 9: Risk Assessment

This section asks specific questions on the officers’ perceptions of the risk of being attacked by an inmate and injured. For these items, we relied on two studies of risk assessment in correctional officer populations. Items #73-76 are modified versions of questions fielded with correctional officers regarding HIV risk perception (Alarid and Marquart 2009). Items #77-81 were fielded in the current wording in a correctional officer population (Lambert and Paoline 2010). These items had been fielded in prior research and exhibited a Cronbach’s alpha of .79.

Alarid LF, Marquart JW: Officer Perceptions of Risk of Contracting HIV/AIDS in Prison: A Two-State Comparison. Prison Journal. 2009, 89:440-459.
Lambert E, Paoline EA: Take this job and shove it: An exploratory study of turnover intent among jail staff. Journal of Criminal Justice. 2010, 38:139-148.

Section 10: Assault History

This section asks questions on the frequency and timing of attacks against the officers in the line of duty with specific weapons, the extent of injury to the officers, and the context of the most serious of these assaults.

Post Data Collection Analyses

Post-data collection, focus groups will be conducted with a panel of experts identified by the American Correctional Association (ACA) and the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA). The final data will be reviewed and discussed by panelists with the goal of producing recommendations that will improve body armor usage in correctional facilities. It is also anticipated that summary statistics and analytic findings will be presented at relevant conferences held by stakeholder organizations, such as the American Society of Criminology (ASC), ASCA, and the American Statistical Association (ASA). It is also anticipated that articles will be submitted to practitioner and academic journals for publication and study results may be noted by stakeholders online, such as on the ACA and ASCA websites.

Most of the analyses performed by NORC of the proposed data to collect will be descriptive and exploratory in nature. The distribution of the data will be examined and descriptive statistics (e.g., frequencies, measures of central tendency, and measures of dispersion,) with all the study variables will be developed. NORC will also provide single point estimates with confidence intervals. For example, a single estimate for the proportion of COs in the U.S. that report not wearing body armor, along with a confidence interval, will be reported. Correlations and contingency table analysis will be used to develop a profile of facilities with very poor practices in the area of body armor policies and practices. Bivariate cross-tabulations and comparison of means also will be conducted using the main study variables.

A variety of bivariate analyses (e.g., cross-tabulations) will be performed on relevant background variables to determine whether there are statistically significant relationships between facility and CO characteristics and the use of body armor, including risk factors for not using armor. Variables that are significant in the bivariate models will then be entered into later multivariate models as control variables. Binary outcome variables will be explored with logistic regression. Continuous and interval outcome measures will be assessed through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models. However, for dependent variables not meeting the distribution assumptions of OLS regression, appropriate non-linear limited distribution curves will be used (e.g., Poisson or other count model techniques). These multivariate analyses will also help identify facilities that are using promising practices in the area of body armor.

3. Uses of Information Technology to Reduce Burden

NORC’s past experience has shown that offering multiple modalities for respondents improves response rates, with minimal (if any) introduction of any potential mode effects (which can be addressed by post-hoc statistical adjustments if they emerge). It is estimated that completion of the facility-level questionnaire will take about 35 minutes and the officer-level questionnaire will take about 25 to 30 minutes. To make completion of the surveys convenient for respondents, NORC as survey administrator will offer multiple modes for completion: the facility survey will be available for completion on paper and by telephone, while the officer survey will be available on paper, by phone, and on the web. Paper surveys can be returned by mail (in a provided postage-paid envelope), by fax, or by email.

The web-based instrument is an important option for respondents. NORC has successfully conducted numerous criminal justice agency surveys that have included a web survey option (Attachment 3). This mode offers cost efficiencies by reducing the need for hardcopy processing. High-quality data are collected through an intuitive design, a user-friendly interface, and real-time checking of responses for numeric range and logic error. For security purposes, NORC will provide each respondent with a unique PIN/password for accessing the web survey option. No special hardware, accounting software, or systems are necessary to provide information for this data collection.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

There will be no duplication of effort based on the nature and scope of this survey. The information sought is not obtainable from any other data source. Our review of the literature has revealed no similar surveys on body armor with correctional officers at the national, regional or local levels. In fact, we did not identify any large scale national surveys at the individual-level with correctional officers on any issue. Data collected in the Facility Survey is not collected in the Officer Survey and vice versa.

5. Minimizing Burden on Small Businesses

Not applicable. Information will not be gathered from small businesses.

6. Consequences of Not Conducting Collection

This data collection will be the first and only source of national-level data on the use of body armor by correctional officers. Similar data has not been collected before. If the proposed data collection is not conducted, the field will be unable to draw on the data to develop evidence-based recommendations and policies to improve the safety of correctional officers through the use of body armor.

7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances that would require a respondent to report more than once, report in less than 30 days, retain records over three years, or in any other foreseeable way increase the respondent’s burden to provide the requested information.

8. Public Comments and Consultations

The research under this clearance is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6. The 60-day and 30-day notices for public comment have been published in the Federal Register (Volume 77, Number 72, Page 22,345 on April 13, 2012 and Volume 77, Number 127, Page 39,259 on July 2, 2012, respectively). During the development phase, members of the ACA reviewed the surveys. These members reviewed the facility and officer questionnaires and provided feedback to NORC. The ACA also selected correctional facilities to participate in a pilot study in which the questionnaires and data collection protocol were tested. Respondents from the pilot provided detailed feedback on the survey. Please see Attachment 4 which contains the Pilot Report.

NORC’s points of contact at subcontracting and other involved organizations are as follows:

(1) Jeff Washington

American Correctional Association

206 N Washington Street

Alexandria, VA 22314

(2) Bruce Kubu

Police Executive Research Forum

1120 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 930

Washington, DC 20036-3923

(3) Mark Greene

National Institute of Justice

810 7th Street NW

Washington, DC 20531

9. Provision of Payments or Gifts to Respondents

Respondents will not be offered an incentive.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

The proposed data collection will be performed by NORC under cooperative agreement 2011-IJ-CX-K056 with NIJ.  Work performed under this award is subject to 42 USC 3789g and Department of Justice regulations 28 CFR 22 and 28 CFR 46. Work to be performed under this award has been reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the NIJ Human Subjects Protection Officer.  Respondents will be informed using an IRB approved consent process that survey participation is voluntary and their responses will be protected and held confidential. The project has a Privacy Certificate approved by the NIJ Human Subjects Protection Officer that includes information about the data collection plan, data security, data access, data retention, and data disposition. De-identified data resulting from this collection will be made public according to standard disclosure review procedures used by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD). If the data are found to contain potential secondary identifiers, NACJD will either provide access on a restricted basis, or perturb the data so as to further de-identify according to standard procedures including removal of the variable, top-coding, bracketing, collapsing or combining variables, sampling, or swapping. If data are made available on a restricted basis, users will be required to provide IRB review and approval and submit a Privacy Certificate prior to data transfer.

11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

Most of the items on the survey are about body armor use, care, and maintenance and are not of a sensitive nature. Some items involve some sensitive areas related to general health, mental health, potential post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and body weight. The physical and mental items are relevant to COs’ risk assessment and decision making processes. COs’ stress levels may pertain to whether they wear armor, mandated by policy or not, as well as to their sense of the relative dangerousness of a situation .

Furthermore, body weight and body armor fit are known concerns for body armor usage. Eighty percent of surveyed police officers believed that back pain was attributable to use of the body armor . The physical nature and requirements of some CO job assignments may be relevant to their physical comfort with and without body armor. An experimental study reported significant physiological impairment and increased exhaustion among both men and women on several physical measures when wearing body armor .

12. Estimate of Respondent Burden

The level of effort necessary to complete the survey was assessed during a pilot test of the facility and officer questionnaires in late 2012. Key elements of the pilot testing and the results are summarized here and also discussed in Section B.4. Please see Attachment 4 which contains the Pilot Report. A convenience sample was used for the pilot test based on recommendations from the ACA and NIJ and other OJP staff. Participants were asked to complete and return the appropriate survey, based on their position within the correctional facility, and to participate in a telephone debriefing. Eight participants completed the Facility Survey and eight correctional officers completed the Correctional Officer Survey.

Based on the pilot test results, participants completing the facility questionnaire finished the survey in 35 minutes on average, with a range of 15 to 86 minutes. Participants completing the officer questionnaire finished the survey in 25 minutes on average, with a range of 15 to 37 minutes. The administration times for the surveys are displayed in Tables 1 and 2 below.

Table 1. Administration time for the Facility Survey from the pilot study.

State	Facility Survey Administration Time
Mississippi	27 minutes
Maryland	Not Completed
Nebraska	Not Recorded
Maine	Not Recorded
Wyoming	30 minutes
Illinois	15 minutes
Ohio	Not Recorded
Oregon	15 minutes
Pennsylvania	86 minutes (needed to ask Deputy for responses)

Table 2. Administration time for the Correctional Officer Survey from the pilot study.

State	Correctional Officer Survey Administration Time
Mississippi	37 minutes
Maryland	Not Completed
Nebraska	20 minutes
Maine	Not Recorded
Wyoming	15 minutes
Illinois	30 minutes
Ohio	20 minutes
Oregon	27 minutes
Pennsylvania	24 minutes

Based on the pilot testing, the following burden estimates were computed. The facility questionnaire will be sent to a sample of approximately 153 state and local correctional facilities. An administrator at each facility will complete the questionnaire, which is anticipated to take approximately 30 minutes, for a total of 76.5 hours. In addition, the administrator (or another staff person designated by the facility administrator) will provide NORC with a list of all currently employed COs at the facility. This activity is expected to take approximately 60 minutes, for a total of 153 hours. Once NORC receives the CO list from the facility, 10-12 COs from the facility will be randomly selected to complete the officer questionnaire. The officer questionnaire will take approximately 30 minutes to complete, for a total of 841.5 hours (11 COs x 153 = 1,683 x 30 minutes). Based on these activities, sample sizes, and estimates of duration, the total respondent burden is anticipated to be 841.5 hours. The anticipated times involved per activity are summarized in Table 3 below.

Table 3. Reporting times for the facility-level and officer-level surveys.

	N	Duration	Hours
Facility-level survey	153	30 min	76.5
Gathering of officer list	153	60 min	153.0
Officer survey	1,683	30 min	841.5
Total			1,071.0

Based on these estimates, the following burden statement will be included with the Facility Survey:

Burden Statement

Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, we cannot ask you to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The survey will be sent to Federal and state correctional facility administrators. The average time required to complete the survey is estimated at 30 minutes. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any aspect of this survey, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to the Director, National Institute of Justice, 810 Seventh Street, NW, Washington DC 20531. Do not send your completed form to this address.

Based on these estimates, the following burden statement will be included with the Correctional Officer Survey:

Burden Statement

Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, we cannot ask you to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The survey will be sent to Federal and state correctional officers. The average time required to complete the survey is estimated at 30 minutes. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any aspect of this survey, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to the Director, National Institute of Justice, 810 Seventh Street, NW, Washington DC 20531. Do not send your completed form to this address.

13. Estimate of Cost Burden

The facility questionnaire will be filled out by one facility administrator equivalent to a base GS level 13/Step 5 ($81,230 per year or $39.05 per hour). It is anticipated that the same respondent will also compile and send the officer list to NORC. These activities (questionnaire completion and officer list) are estimated to take approximately 1.5 hours to complete, yielding a cost of $58.58 to the facility respondent. For all 153 facility respondents and activities, the total estimated cost would be $8,962.74. The officer questionnaire will be completed by COs equivalent to the GS 11 level/Step 5 ($56,991 per year or $27.40 per hour). The time burden on officer respondents is estimated to be 30 minutes, making the cost $13.70 per officer respondent. For all 1,683 respondents and activities, the total estimated cost would be $23,057.10 (1,683 officers x $13.70 per officer). The total cost burden is estimated to be $32,019.84.

14. Cost to Federal Government

This PRA clearance request to OMB encompasses a survey collection that accounts for unique costs to the government. NORC was competitively awarded a cooperative agreement (2011-IJ-CX-K056) in the amount of $383,641 to develop the data collection instruments described here to investigate decision-making factors that influence correctional officer use of body armor. NORC staff are responsible for all programmatic aspects of the research project and development and administration of the data collection instrument. The entire award amount to NORC should be considered dedicated to the effort proposed here. NIJ staff provide award oversight, project-level feedback on the data collection instrument, guidance and advice on developing materials required for OMB clearance, and coordinate the clearance of the PRA package.

Based upon 2012, 2013, and projected 2014 NIJ salaries and expenses along with the total award amount to NORC, the costs to the government is estimated at $414,441 over three years from FY12 through FY14. This comes out to an annualized estimated cost of $140,000. The estimated costs are divided between NIJ costs ($21,300) and NORC costs ($383,641), both of which include salary, fringe, and overhead. Table 4 below shows a cost breakout:

Table 4. Estimated costs for the Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities Survey.

NIJ costs

Staff salaries

GS-13 Physical Scientist (2 weeks FY12) $7,600

GS-14 General Engineer (2 weeks FY13) $4,100

GS-14 General Engineer (2 weeks FY14) $4,100

Subtotal salaries $15,800

Fringe benefits (35% of salaries) $5,500

Subtotal: NIJ costs (salary and fringe) $21,300

NORC costs

FY12 – FY14 (NIJ Award # 2011-IJ-CX-K056) $383,641

Total estimated costs FY12 – FY14 $414,441

15. Reasons for Change in Burden

This is a new data collection, so all burden estimates are original.

16. Publication Plans and Schedule

The projected schedule for the Officer Safety in Correctional Facilities Survey is as follows:

Preparation and pretesting Completed December 2012

Package development and submission December 2012 – April 2013

DOJ and OMB review April 2013 – June 2013

Data collection June 2013 to January 2014

Data processing/analysis February 2014 to April 2014

Submit Final Report and Data to NIJ May 2014 to September 2014

Data release to public Upon NIJ approval

17. Display of Expiration Date

The expiration date of the OMB approval will be displayed on the web survey and survey forms.

18. Exceptions to the Certification Statement

There are no exceptions identified in Item 19, “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submission,” of OMB Form 83-I.

REFERENCES

Alarid, L. F. and J. W. Marquart (2009). "Officer Perceptions of Risk of Contracting HIV/AIDS in Prison: A Two-State Comparison." Prison Journal 89(4): 440-459.

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