2016 SPI Supporting Statement Part A_final_passback revised 8-13-2015

Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016

Overview

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is seeking clearance to conduct the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI). Through a Cooperative Agreement (Award No. 2011-MU-MU-K070), RTI International (RTI) is working with BJS on this project and will serve as the data collection agent. The 2016 SPI will be a national, omnibus survey of prisoners age 18 or older within the United States who are incarcerated in confinement or community-based correctional facilities operated by or for state or federal governments. BJS has been conducting SPI periodically since the 1970s among state prisoners and the early 1990s among federal prisoners. A main purpose of this omnibus survey is to generate reliable national estimates of the characteristics of prisoners over a variety of domains, including characteristics that are germane to the corrections field, such as the severity of offenses committed and criminal history; medical, mental health, and substance abuse and dependency problems; behaviors in prison including both rule infractions and participation in programs. Other important objectives of SPI are to track changes in these characteristics over time, describe special populations of prisoners, and identify policy-relevant changes in the prison population. The 2016 survey will also be used to produce subnational estimates of prisoners within jurisdictions that have the largest prison populations (i.e., 100,000 or more) in the nation. The 2016 data will be collected through personal interviews with a representative sample of about 23,200 prisoners using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).¹

The 2016 national implementation builds upon work that was conducted through the Survey of Prison Inmates: Design and Testing Project (Award No. 2009-BJ-CX-K054). BJS worked with RTI on this project to achieve a variety of objectives: 1) enhance the questionnaire to measure new constructs important to corrections and improve the measurement of existing constructs; 2) develop a sample design that will generate reliable national and subnational statistics; 3) explore the feasibility and develop protocols to use administrative records to supplement survey data, thereby minimizing respondent burden, and conduct future studies of inmates; and 4) conduct a pilot study of the questionnaire. Per this latter objective, from July through August of 2013, the pilot study was conducted with a sample of about 480 prisoners across six state and federal correctional facilities.² Following the pilot study’s culmination, BJS and RTI used the results and feedback to make changes to the questionnaire, to include scaling back the length of the interview significantly. Prior to fielding the national study, BJS will test the functionality of the CAPI instrument among a sample of 60 inmates in two facilities in September 2015. The purpose of this test is to ensure the CAPI survey instrument is correctly programmed for the national study, and that inmates are properly routed through the survey to maximize data quality in the national study and minimize burden on inmates and facilities. Any glitches in the CAPI programming discovered during the testing will be fixed prior to fielding the national study. The national data collection is scheduled to start in January 2016 and continue through August 2016.

A. Justification

1. Necessity of Information Collection

Title 42, United States Code, Section 3732, authorizes BJS to collect, analyze, and publish statistical information that will serve as a continuous and comparable national indication of the prevalence, incidence, rates, extent, distribution, and attributes of crime in support of national, state, and local justice policy and decision making and concerning the operations of the criminal justice system at the federal, state and local levels (see Attachment A1 – BJS Authorizing Statute). To fulfill part of this mission, BJS has periodically fielded national omnibus surveys of prisoners since the 1970s.³ The 2016 implementation of SPI will be the seventh national study of its kind. The primary objective of SPI is to produce national estimates of the characteristics of the prison population across a variety of domains. This information is critical to understanding the composition of the inmate population and the changes overtime, factors related to the changes observed, including the impacts of corrections policy and practice reforms, the risk inmates pose to correctional agencies and for recidivism, and the challenges inmates face upon reintegrating into the community.

At yearend 2013, there were 1,574,700 persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the United States, an increase of 412% (up 1.3 million prisoners) since 1978.⁴ The increase necessitated an expansion of the nation’s prison systems, which was an expensive endeavor as a prison sentence is the most costly sanction for committing a crime in the United States. Over the last three decades, state spending for corrections has risen steadily, outpacing the overall growth in state budgets.⁵ Between 1982 and 2010, state correctional expenditures increased from $15 billion to about $48 billion, with three-quarters of total correctional expenditures spent on institutional corrections during this period.⁶ However, in recent years states have been faced with budget cuts and resource constraints partly due to the nation’s recession. In light of these constraints, states and policymakers started to focus on ways to reduce the size and costs of the prison population, such as criminal justice reforms that direct resources to more serious offenders and provide alternatives to incarceration, while simultaneously attempting to reduce recidivism and maintain public safety. The continuing debate on the size of the prison population and crowding, the associated financial and societal costs of incarceration, and the utility or potential of alternative sanctions are enlightened through comparable and reliable data on prisoners. These types of data and more will be provided by SPI and will provide administrators, officials, and policymakers at all levels of government with national benchmarks and evidence with which to compare their prison populations and inform decision making, highlight challenges, and guide future criminal just planning.

The 2016 SPI survey builds upon prior iterations of SPI and is organized around the concepts of harms, risk, and reentry. Domains related to the severity of the offense, the characteristics of the incident that led to the offense (e.g., injuries to their victims), and criminal history are designed to measure harms that inmates have caused to society (see Attachment B – 2016 SPI Questionnaire). Domains related to harm elements as well as additional factors such as the extent of connections to mainstream institutions of social integration (e.g., pre-prison employment within the labor market) or pro-social connections (e.g., ties to family/friends, the community) are designed to capture dynamic risk elements of recidivism; other domains such as programs or treatment inmates participated in, and their motivation to participate, are designed to understand factors that are intended to mitigate risk. Lastly, domains related to substance abuse, mental health, and physical health are intended to address reentry challenges.

The scope of information collected solely through SPI and the level of detail for some topics is not available from any other single data source, particularly for special populations such as drug and alcohol users and mentally ill prisoners. It is an important source of national data necessary to address a number of key and emerging issues in corrections including policy-relevant subjects, such as, but not limited to −

• firearm violence committed by inmates and illegal acquisitions

• the rate of parental incarceration, the number of minor children affected by parental incarceration, and ties to their children pre-incarceration and since admission

• prevalence of chronic medical conditions and infectious diseases among prisoners and service utilization

• scope and severity of mental health problems among prisoners, their criminal history, and their service needs

• extent to which attributes of offenders, the severity of their offenses, and their criminal histories explain racial disparities in imprisonment

• substance use and dependence among prisoners and their treatment history

• the military and criminal backgrounds of incarcerated veterans as well as their health conditions and needs

• family background and structure of prisoners and changes over time

• explaining imprisonment rates in relation to socioeconomic status and criminal involvement

• employment history and educational background of inmates and the variation across different subpopulations

• the severity of attributes of criminal victimization incidents that are punished by incarceration

• prisoner behavior while incarcerated and understanding motivation for particular behaviors (e.g., program participation)

SPI fits within the larger BJS portfolio of collections that inform the nation on the nature, composition, and changes in inmates sentenced to state and federal prison. BJS’s National Prisoner Statistics program (NPS -1, OMB Control Number 1121-0102) collects annual aggregate counts of the number of prisoners incarcerated in state and federal prisons, as well as the number admitted to and released from prisons annually. BJS uses NPS to report on the size of the prison population over time, changes in the size over time, and the flow of offenders through state and federal prison systems. The National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP, OMB Control Number 1121-0065) collects administrative, individual-level records on prison admissions, releases, stock population, and discharges from post-custody community supervision in almost all states. Information collected includes sentencing, offense, and demographic data as well as post-custody community supervision outcomes. The NCRP data are used to enhance national estimates from NPS of the flow of offenders through prisons, and to publish annual distributions of offense, age, and length of stay. Through SPI though, BJS is able to produce key statistics on the characteristics of the prison population beyond what NPS and NCRP provide and for a number of constructs that can only be measured using self-report data based on a standardized approach in order to report reliable national statistics. Altogether, these different sources of prisoner data allow BJS to 1) provide a complete picture of the impact of the prison population on the flow of offenders through the justice system; 2) describe the unique challenges correctional agencies face in maintaining the safety of inmates and prison staff; 3) illustrate the importance of understanding, accounting for, and reducing costs associated with imprisonment and addressing the needs of these prisoner populations especially in light of current fiscal constraints; 4) address the potential risk this population poses to public safety upon returning to the community given that more than 95% will be reenter society at some point; and 5) demonstrate the need to identify and implement cost-effective strategies to mitigate risk to improve outcomes.

These three collections complement one another in other ways as well. For example, NPS counts are used to weight SPI sample to produce national and some subnational estimates of the prison population. The self-report race and ethnicity data collected through SPI are used to adjust annual estimates of these constructs produced using both NPS and NCRP administrative data. This is required because while BJS makes every effort to provide respondents with the OMB racial categories and definitions, few state data systems are designed to record and report race and ethnicity data to NPS and NCRP based on the OMB-required racial categories, particularly the “two or more races” category. The prisoner survey is also important for supplementing the information provided through the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Annually, NCVS is used by BJS to produce statistics on personal and household victimization, but the survey does not include the institutionalized population. Some questions in NCVS are designed to collect data about the characteristics of the incident that led to the victimization, but limited information can be collected from victims as some are unable to report reliable data about their assailants. There are questions in the 2016 SPI survey that are intended to fill this gap by directly asking the information of inmates, to provide a more comprehensive description of the level, nature, and consequences of violent victimization in the United States.

As mentioned above, the questionnaire and procedures developed for the 2016 SPI leveraged the efforts undertaken through a design and testing project that BJS also worked on with RTI.⁷ One key goal of redesigning the questionnaire was to adopt approaches to measure particular phenomena that are consistent with those used in general population surveys. The purposes of this effort were to ensure BJS can make direct comparisons of prisoners to the general population as a way of enhancing the correctional field’s knowledge and understanding about the level and scope of particular issues among prisoners. It will also enhance the reliability and validity of particular estimates by leveraging the research and testing other government agencies have accomplished to report on particular phenomena. For example, the physical health section in the 2016 survey includes a standard disability scale that was developed and tested by the Washington Disability Group and is included in general population surveys like the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and NCVS. In the socioeconomic (SES) section, the question that asks inmates about health insurance prior to incarceration was adopted from ACS and NHIS. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has conducted extensive research and testing to continually improve the measurement of the prevalence and correlates of substance dependence and abuse among the noninstitutionalized population through the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). BJS made a substantial effort to adopt the NSDUH approach in the 2016 SPI and worked directly with NSDUH experts to modify it slightly given the need to tailor some questions to our population of interest. BJS also took advantage of the improvements SAMHSA has made to measure serious psychological distress (SPD) through NSDUH using the K6 distress scale by including the scale in the 2016 prisoner survey.⁸

Another important goal of the 2016 SPI is to rely on administrative records, when possible, to augment the self-report data and conduct future studies of inmates. BJS is committed to leveraging administrative records for statistical purposes to reduce costs to taxpayers and minimize burden on the public, as well as to engage in data sharing with other federal agencies, especially in light of the White House directive (M-14-06, dated February 14, 2014) that strongly encourages these types of efforts among federal agencies. BJS scaled back the content of the SPI questionnaire, specifically the criminal justice section, compared to the 2004 SPI survey in an effort to reduce burden on facilities and inmates and minimize costs. NCRP records will be used to supplement the 2016 survey data on that topic, specifically to provide more detailed information on the characteristics of the criminal justice status of inmates at the time of their arrest (e.g., time in the community prior to the current incarceration), their current offense (e.g., counts, new court commitments, probation/parole violators), and their sentence (e.g., indeterminate or determinate). This records and survey data linkage will enable BJS to further examine and increase our knowledge about recidivism and reentry, such as additional risk factors (collected through SPI) that are associated with time to failure when released to the community as well as the impact of factors intended to mitigate negative outcomes. In addition, augmenting the 2016 SPI data with NCRP records will provide an opportunity to better understand post-prison mortality and the risk factors associated with higher mortality rates among inmates released to the community compared to those still incarcerated. Data from BJS’s Deaths in Custody Reporting Program and Annual Parole Survey show that the mortality rate of former inmates is three times higher than the rate of those still incarcerated.

In order to link the survey data with the NCRP records, prisons with inmates in the SPI sample will be asked to provide the unique, fingerprint-supported State Identification (SID) number of each inmate and their Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) identification number, which is the biometric identifier at the national level (see Part B, Section 2 Procedures for Information Collection for more details about the collection of this information from facilities). As part of the verbal consent process to participate in the SPI study, inmates will be informed of the intent to obtain their criminal history records at some point during the 5 years after the interview (see Part B, Section 2 Procedures for Information Collection for more details about the consent process, including the informed consent document).

BJS also plans to supplement the 2016 SPI data with records of arrest and prosecution (RAP) to provide more detailed information about the criminal histories of inmates beyond the indicators collected in SPI, as the criminal history section of the 2016 survey was scaled back compared to the 2004 SPI to reduce survey burden. This work will rely on the partnerships (e.g., Nlets, FBI), infrastructure, and software systems BJS has developed to obtain, process, and standardize RAP sheets from all 50 states and the federal system to convert them into research databases that support national recidivism studies. These new methods that have modernized BJS’s recidivism statistical series will allow us to conduct a variety of recidivism studies on a more routine basis and eventually produce national recidivism rates. For example, BJS intends to conduct a prospective recidivism study using the SPI sample by relying on NCRP records to determine which inmates in the SPI sample have been released from prison since the survey was completed and thus comprise the cohort of prisoners for the future study. While the SPI serves as a rich source of information that is not available through the RAP sheets or NCRP, together, these sources of data provide an opportunity to inform the criminal justice field, policymakers, and various other stakeholders about recidivism at a national level beyond static factors like demographic, offense, and prior criminal history information. The SPI also addresses dynamic risk factors, such as pro-social connections, pre-prison employment, mental health and substance abuse problems etc., and factors intended to minimize risk such as educational or job skills programs and treatment for mental health or substance abuse disorders. BJS will use the SID and/or the FBI number provided by the prisons through SPI to pull the RAP sheets of the released SPI inmates in the study. The RAP sheets will be processed through the software developed by BJS to parse out the key data elements from the RAP sheets, convert them into a uniform structure, and standardize the information (e.g., arrest, offense, and court disposition information) in order to produce a research database for analytic purposes.

Another effort BJS plans to pursue through the 2016 SPI is to link the self-report data with

other federal administrative data. The goal of this effort is to supplement the survey data with detailed information on pre-prison employment, earnings, benefits received and eligibility, and other external factors that could contribute to our understanding of incarceration and community reentry. Through an existing interagency agreement (IAA) that was executed and funded in 2014, BJS plans to work with the Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications (CARRA) at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies (CES) to accomplish this records linkage. The SPI data for each consenting inmate will be linked to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Numident file behind the U.S. Census’ secure firewall, which will then allow analysts in the CARRA group to assign a personal identification key (PIK) to each inmate and delete all personal information. (See Part B, Section 2 Procedures for Information Collection for more information about the consent process, including the informed consent document.)

The PIK will enable the 2016 SPI data to be linked to a number of other federal datasets as well, such as records of receipt of supplemental security income; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); public housing and rental assistance history; Department of Housing and Urban Development-insured mortgage loans; SSA’s Death Master File; enrollment in Medicare; and any listing in Census’ decennial census or American Community Survey (ACS). BJS is also pursuing this same effort through other statistical programs, such as NCRP.

Historically, BJS has conducted SPI every five to six years and prior to 2004, it was the only national survey of prisoners conducted by BJS. However, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA, P.L. 108-179) resulted in BJS fielding the National Inmate Survey (NIS) in 2007, 2008-2009, and 2011-2012. The goals and methods of NIS were different than SPI though, most notably NIS was designed to produce facility-level estimates and the content of the questionnaire focused primarily on sexual victimization in order to meet the requirements of PREA. To minimize burden on correctional facilities, BJS temporarily suspended SPI while NIS was in the field and for several years after, and took advantage of the delay to redesign aspects of the SPI study as described above. The information gathered through the 2004 SPI to this day forms the most comprehensive data available on the characteristics of the U.S. prison population. The 2016 survey will be a follow-up to the SPI series that began in the early 1970s and will provide much-needed information to fill gaps and explain changes in the prison population over the last 10 years, especially changes related to criminal justice reforms that started several years ago in an effort to reduce the size of the prison population and cut corrections expenditures. As such, the 2016 SPI survey is highly anticipated by many federal agencies, state officials, researchers, policymakers, advocates, and other criminal justice stakeholders.

2. Needs and Uses of the Data

At the request of BJS, in 2009 the National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) examined all BJS programs to identify important gaps and provide recommendations about prioritizing future programs and collections. One key recommendation from the panel was to expand coverage of programs to address prisoner reentry and recidivism issues more broadly and more frequently.⁹ In addition, earlier in 2015, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a report that outlines the President’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2016.¹⁰ A section of the budget is devoted to strengthening federal statistics because they provide critical evidence to support both public and private decision making. Specific funding proposed for BJS includes 1) expanding the use of administrative records in the areas of law enforcement, corrections, and recidivism data, and 2) expanding BJS’s prisoner (i.e., SPI) and jail inmate surveys to better address reentry issues to inform the community reintegration process. The CNSTAT’s findings, together with the Administration’s proposed funding commitments, demonstrate the need for the types of data that the 2016 SPI will collect and the future recidivism studies it will support. As explained in the Section 1 Necessity, the 2016 SPI questionnaire was redesigned to directly address the same key issues identified by the CNSTAT panel and the Administration’s budget plan, specifically through a framework that focuses on the harms (e.g., severity of offense, injuries to victims, criminal history) inmates have caused to society, the potential risk they pose for recidivism (e.g., harm elements; extent of pro-social connections such as ties to family and friends, pre-prison employment; misconduct while incarcerated), and the challenges they face upon reentry (e.g., physical and behavioral health problems, need for services and treatment) as well as factors (e.g., prison programs, treatment pre-incarceration and since admission) that are intended to improve the reintegration process and minimize negative outcomes. The 2016 SPI will play a critical role in supporting BJS’s commitments to better leveraging administrative records to expand and enhance the statistics produced through our various programs, help us to better understand factors that contribute to recidivism and improve the reentry process, and directly address the data needs identified by the CNSTAT panel and the Administration.

Over time, the self-report data collected through SPI have been used by BJS to examine the prison population over a variety of domains and issues and assess trends in the population over time. BJS has reported SPI results in numerous statistical products on a range of topics. These topics and products include, but are not limited to −

Physical health

• Medical Problems of Prisoners (Special Reports) – presents estimates of the prevalence of current medical conditions among prisoners, including infectious diseases, dental problems, and disabilities; injuries experienced by inmates since admission; medical services received by inmates since admission.

• HIV in Prisons (Special Reports) – presents estimates of HIV infection among inmates and select risk factors, such as prior drug use.

Behavioral health

• Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates (Special Reports) – presents estimates of the prevalence of indicators of mental health problems among prisoners; treatment history for mental health problems, including treatment received pre-incarceration and since admission.

• Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners (Special Reports) – presents estimates of the level of drug use by prisoners prior to incarceration and the types of drugs used; prevalence of drug dependence or abuse; history of drug treatment.

Education

• Education and Correctional Populations (Special Report) – presents estimates of educational attainment across the various correctional populations including prisoners, the differences by select characteristics, and the availability and participation in education and vocational programs.

Firearms

• Firearm Violence (Special Report) ─ presents trends on the number and rate of fatal and nonfatal firearm violence based on NCVS. Includes estimates (from SPI) of the types of firearms used by inmates during a crime and describes the various ways inmates acquired their firearms.

• Firearm Use by Offenders (Special Report) ─ presents estimates of inmates who possessed a firearm during the crime that led to their incarceration, the types of firearms they used, how they used them, and where they obtained them.

Violence

• Family Violence Statistics Including Statistics on Strangers and Acquaintances (Special Report) ─ compares family and nonfamily violence statistics from victimization through the different stages of the justice system, including imprisonment.

• Violent State Prisoners and Their Victims (Special Report) ─ examines the characteristics of persons victimized by violent offenders incarcerated in state prisons.

Alcohol/drugs and crime

• Alcohol and Crime (Special Report; BJS webpage) – presents an overview of national statistics on the role of alcohol in violent victimization and its use among those convicted of crimes, including prisoners.

• DWI Offenders under Correctional Supervision (Special Report) ─ presents estimates of the number of offenders under different correctional statuses, including prisoners, who were convicted of a DWI offense.

• Drug-Related Crime (Fact Sheet) ─ describes the various ways in which drugs and crime can be related and presents available statistics on drugs and crime, including among prisoners.

Veterans

• Veterans in State and Federal Prison (Special Reports) ─ presents statistics concerning inmates' prior military service, including branch of military service, periods of wartime military service, combat duty, and type of military discharge; substance abuse and dependence problems; mental health problems and treatment history.

Incarcerated parents

• Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children (Special Reports) ─ presents the prevalence of parenting among state and federal prisoners, the number of minor children with a parent in prison, the contact with their children pre-incarceration and since admission, and the livings arrangements of their minor children.

Women

• Women Offenders (Special Report) ─ examines offending by adult women and their handling by the criminal justice system, including women incarcerated in state and federal prisons.

Likelihood of incarceration

• Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population (Special Report) ─ presents estimates of the number of living persons in the United States who have ever been sentenced to state or federal prison and the lifetime chances of going to prison.

BJS has also used the SPI data to create a series of statistical tables that profile the state and federal prison populations across various domains and examine trends, such as Section 4 in Correctional Populations in the United States, 1997. SPI data are also critical to producing annual estimates of the prison population by race. The self-report data on race and ethnicity are used to adjust the annual estimates produced through the NPS and NCRP administrative data in BJS’s annual Prisoners bulletin in order to report reliable estimates based on the OMB-required racial categories. Over the years, BJS staff have attended national conferences convened by a number of associations, including the American Correctional Association, the American Probation and Parole Association, the American Society of Criminology, the UMass Correctional Health Program, and others sponsored in part by BJS, such as the BJS/JRSA National Conference and the NIC/BJS NCRP Data Providers Conference, to present a number of findings from topics covered in SPI, such as mental illness, medical problems, and incarcerated parents, as well as methodological efforts to enhance measurement in SPI, such as mental health statistics.

The 2016 SPI data will also be used by BJS in those ways and in other ways to address new issues in corrections and other topics such as public health. For example, the information about medical and mental health conditions of inmates, when coupled with other information about their economic status, will be used by BJS to generate estimates of the impact on healthcare reform, specifically the Affordable Care Act. Data such as these will also be used by program planners in agencies such as the National Institute of Mental Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, as well as by state corrections administrators, to develop strategies and programs to address the needs of inmates and reduce recidivism. BJS will also use the survey data to produce several substantive as well as technical products (see Section 16 Project Schedule and Publication Plans for more information on SPI products). For more information on the range of topics and some of the key statistics that will be available through the 2016 survey, see Attachment C ─ SPI Key Statistics Table.

Statistics and data from SPI are also essential to federal, state, and local entities developing public policy and programs designed to reduce crime and recidivism, and enhance reentry, public safety, and public health. Detailed below are specific examples and descriptions of ways the U.S. Congress, the White House, government agencies, criminal justice practitioners, advocacy groups and other organizations, researchers, the media, and the general public have utilized SPI statistics, data, and products.

U.S. Congress and Congressional Testimony. The U.S. Congress has cited estimates from the 2004 SPI to justify legislation to improve the management of offenders with mental health problems and expand mental health services and other services to prepare prisoners and their families for reentry to improve outcomes, specifically through the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act (MIOTCRA) of 2004 (P.L. 108-4140) and the Second Chance Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-199).

The estimates from SPI have also been cited by subject matter experts in at least six written or oral Congressional testimonies to urge legislators to support strategies to reduce and prevent gun violence,¹¹ better address the mental health needs of inmates,¹² establish drug and veterans’ treatment courts,¹³ improve the general state of corrections and rehabilitation services,¹⁴ support the use of federal resources to establish veterans courts,¹⁵ and understand the importance of treating drug addiction as a disease and the promise of medication-assisted recovery. ¹⁶

The White House. As explained earlier in this section, the FY 2016 budget request of the President contains four volumes. Chapter 16 of the Analytical Perspective volume addresses the need to strengthen federal statistics. Funding is requested to provide support, improve upon, and expand ongoing BJS data collections. In particular, the need to expand the surveys of inmates in prisons (i.e., SPI) and jails in order to inform the process of reentry is discussed.

At least two recent White House initiatives relied on the data made available through SPI to establish the scope and magnitude of the issue at hand. President Obama’s 2013 national gun violence reduction strategy calls on Congress to pass legislation to strengthen background checks. In order to bolster the need for policy reform, it cites the percentage of inmates who used a gun during the commission of a crime and underwent a background check while purchasing the firearm from a retail location.¹⁷ The White House Council on Women and Girls’ report, “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being” includes estimates of the female prison population from SPI, such as those who were physically and/or sexually abused during their lifetime.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) routinely uses SPI statistics in a number of ways. One use of the data was to establish the evidence and need for in-custody treatment programs, to include gender-specific programs for incarcerated women many of whom have minor children. In addition, the ONDCP relied on SPI to provide estimates of substance use and abuse among inmates and included this information in each of its annual “National Drug Control Strategy: Data Supplement” reports, from 2008 to 2013.¹⁸ Another example of how ONDCP uses data provide by SPI is evident on their “In-Custody Treatment and Offender Reentry” webpage that discusses the percentage of inmates who met the criteria for substance abuse or dependency and received treatment while incarcerated, inmates with minor children, and reentry statistics.¹⁹ Lastly, ONDCP features SPI data on incarcerated veterans and their substance use in a 2010 fact sheet, “Veterans Treatment Court,”²⁰ and general substance use data among inmates in a 2014 fact sheet, “Consequences of Illicit Drug Use in America.”²¹

Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ is led by the U.S. Attorney General (AG). The AG holds a myriad of responsibilities, to include speaking to Congress, the President, the media, and the general public about the current U.S. prison system. In addition to speeches, the AG also organizes topical taskforces and initiatives to address particular areas of need, such as Defending Childhood. Data and key statistics from SPI provides important information to the AG, such as the percentage of inmates held in state and federal facilities, prevalence rates of mental illness, effects of incarceration on the family and the number of incarcerated parents, reentry statistics, inmates with an alcohol or drug problem, effectiveness of background checks to reduce gun violence, and racial inequality in the prison system. These data informs not only national and state prison needs and priorities, but agency-wide long-term strategic planning, funding and appropriations, staffing needs and agency development.

For example the Federal Interagency Council on Reentry, a group of 20 federal agencies, was established in 2011 by Attorney General Eric Holder. This council relies on SPI to provide critical information on inmates, such as the prevalence of substance abuse or dependency, inmates’ criminal justice status prior to admission, and extent of drug use at time of offense; and the number of minor children affected by parental incarceration. Such data are used to strengthen the case for reforms, changes, or expansions of reentry policies, programs, and treatment models.²²

The findings from the 2004 SPI that almost half of inmates held in state or federal facilities abused or were dependent on drugs in the year prior to incarceration are included in three DOJ annual fiscal year (FY) performance and accountability reports (2009 to 2011).²³ This information is used to support the need for drug treatment courts, and track progress towards the OJP outcome goal to increase treatment court graduation rates from 21% (FY 2005) to 32% in 2012. These same SPI statistics are also included in two FY annual financial statement audit reports (2011 and 2012) and used as programmatic support for the administration and need for OJP’s Drug Court program.²⁴

DOJ Bureaus and Agencies. Individual offices and bureaus within DOJ rely on the prisoner survey for a variety of efforts, from establishing the prevalence of an issue, to justifying funding and providing background for solicitations in order to better understand and address the needs of the U.S. correctional population. Several offices within OJP, such as the Office of Victims of Crime, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, include information gleaned from SPI in the background and literature review sections of various solicitations.

Office of Justice Programs (OJP) ─ SPI addresses at least one key aspect of OJP’s mission which is to identify crime-related challenges and provide evidence to determine innovative and cost-effective strategies to address them. It also fits within a number of OJP initiatives to improve the reentry process and outcomes through grants created to meet those goals.

The Assistant Attorney General’s (AAG) office regularly requests BJS data on prison inmates on a variety of topics. Most recently, requests have focused on the current size of the inmate and community corrections populations, the health and well-being of inmates, and the volume of offenders who will be released. The most recent 2004 SPI data provided by BJS to the AAG was included on a “Corrections and Reentry” page of a new website that OJP launched in the summer of 2011. The objective of the site is to provide users with information about the extent of the evidence of the effectiveness of justice-related programs. The AAG’s office has also relied on SPI information to include in Congressional testimony given by the AAG to justify funding necessary for particular programs, such as to better understand and minimize the impact of parental incarceration on children.

Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) – BJA uses SPI data for a number of different topics, initiatives, and funding or programmatic justifications. For example, BJA has used the SPI data to justify the allocation of funding for research and grant programs as a result of MIOTCRA and the Second Chance Act. BJA was an active partner in the development of Veterans Treatment Court and numbers from the 2004 SPI regarding incarcerated veterans, alcohol and substance use, and their offenses were used during the development phase to cite a need. This work was funded by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, another user of SPI data who focus on drug and alcohol use and dependency among the criminal justice population. BJA and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) partnered to develop an initiative on safeguarding children with incarcerated parents, and the SPI statistic of 1.7 million children under the age of 18 that have a parent in prison was used to justify this effort.²⁵ A BJA funded project on reentry was awarded to the National Association of Counties (NACo), who used SPI estimates of inmates with mental health and substance use disorders to inform national, state, and local stakeholder advocates of reentry models specific to behavioral health needs of inmates to reduce recidivism and foster safer communities.²⁶

DOJ, Civil Rights Division – Following investigations of civil rights abuses in various state prison facilities, SPI data were included in three different “findings” letters sent to correctional facilities by the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Statistics from the 2004 SPI that nearly 42% of female state prisoners experienced sexual abuse prior to their incarceration were used as contextual background in letters documenting DOJ findings of violations of inmate rights. Such letters were sent to the Topeka Correctional Facility²⁷ and to the State of Alabama regarding the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.²⁸ These numbers are used to document the increase in mentally ill inmates incarcerated in prison.²⁹

The National Institute of Corrections (NIC) – The NIC published a 2012 white paper, “Adults with Behavioral Health Needs Under Correctional Supervision: A Shared Framework for Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Recovery,” that included 2004 SPI estimates of adult inmates with a mental health problem and their current and past involvement with the criminal justice system. This information is key to establishing the scope and prevalence of the issue at hand.³⁰ These same SPI statistics also appear in a NIC research-based policy guide designed to improve outcomes for people with mental illness who are on probation or parole,³¹ and on the NIC webpage, “Mentally Ill Persons in Corrections.”

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) – NIJ uses BJS data to improve the knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues. They have also used the SPI data to justify the allocation of funding for research and grant programs as a result of MIOTCRA and the Second Chance Act. In 2013, NIJ funded a secondary analysis project that used the 2004 SPI data to assess exposure to violence and maladjustment among inmates held in state correctional facilities.³²

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) – OJJDP has a significant grant making component and BJS data are often cited in solicitations, funding announcements, etc. For example, the 2004 SPI statistics on children of incarcerated parents are referenced in solicitations, such as the “FY 2014 Second Chance Act Strengthening Relationships between Young Fathers and Their Children: A Reentry Mentoring Project” and the “FY 2014 Practitioner-Researcher Partnership Mentoring Children of Incarcerated Parents Demonstration Program.” To further advance this issue, OJJDP organized a listening session with the White House Domestic Policy Council and Office of Public Engagement and BJS’s statistics from SPI on children of incarcerated parents are referenced. A synthesis of the research and input presented during this listening session show that the data on incarcerated parents with minor children play a key role in establishing the scope of the matter.³³ In addition to BJS estimates of children of incarcerated parents, the OJJDP Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) used SPI data to establish the prevalence of sexual offending among prison inmates in a 2014 publication about sexual offenses.³⁴

Other Federal Government Agencies. SPI data are needed by a wide range of federal government agencies to inform them on a variety of key issues among the prison population.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - CDC produces fact sheets, guidance documents and, funding opportunity announcements, and maintains websites critical for public health with the help of BJS output products, data collection tools, publications, and data analysis as reference materials. The CDC relies on SPI to better understand health and illness among inmates, treatment and service needs of the correctional populations, and differences between prevalence rates observed in the inmate and general populations. In particular CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, (NCHHSTP) uses BJS estimates on the number of state and federal inmates tested for HIV upon admission to assess and understand HIV testing policies in prison. Other examples of CDC’s use of SPI data are evident on their “Correctional Health” webpage; in their 2006 Recommendations: Corrections and Public Health: Expanding the Reach of Prevention; the “HIV in Corrections” fact sheet; and the 2009 HIV Testing Implementation Guidance for Correctional Settings.

Department of Education (DOE) - The DOE National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) includes SPI estimates in at least two published reports on the educational attainment and high school dropout rate among the prison inmate population.³⁵ These data helps form a comprehensive picture of the national drop-out rate, pinpoint areas for improvements, and identify at-risk populations.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - The HHS actively works to support and address the needs of children of incarcerated parents, and the SPI estimates that 1.7 million children under the age of 18 have a parent in prison is invaluable to stating the scope of the problem. Together with DOJ, HHS launched a website, www.findyouthinfo.gov, which includes a section on children of incarcerated parents. HHS is also a member of the Children of Incarcerated Parents working group with agency representatives acting in key leadership and coordinating roles. The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) also examines and assesses the effects of incarceration on the family with the help of SPI data on the percentage of minor children with an incarcerated parent.³⁶

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) - BJS is the only source of information on the number of incarcerated veterans and the VA considers the BJS estimates as the official numbers. Data collected through the 2004 SPI were used by the VA to estimate the number of veterans exiting prisons and reentering the community in order to develop outreach programs. SPI estimates on the percentage of incarcerated veterans with a substance abuse disorder were instrumental in establishing the need for Veterans Treatment Court. Another use of SPI veterans’ data is its inclusion in a VA Note that analyzes the decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (Court) that addresses the VA’s duties to aid incarcerated veterans, as detailed in the Veterans Claims Assistance Act of 2000.³⁷ The VA also used data from the survey on inmates with mental health problems to assess the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among prison inmates.³⁸

Government Accountability Office (GAO) - The GAO relied on SPI data for at least two reports. GAO Report 08-678 addresses young adults with serious mental illness and cites the finding that nearly 63% of inmates in state prisons 24 years or younger had a mental health problem.³⁹ In this report, mental illness is connected with an increased likelihood of criminal justice contact. A 2011 GAO report (GAO-11-863) on foster care children with incarcerated parents cites SPI throughout, including as the data source for Figure 4, which displays the estimates of incarcerated mothers and incarcerated fathers who reported living arrangements for their minor children. Of particular interest to this report is the estimate that shows the percentage of children placed in a foster home or agency. This report calls for more collaboration between agencies to promote familial ties between foster care children and their incarcerated parents.⁴⁰

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - The NBER published a working paper in 2011 on the effectiveness of drug treatment programs to reduce the incarceration of drug offenders. SPI estimates are used to frame policy implications and show that very few inmates entering state prison would have been eligible for a diversion program through state courts.⁴¹

National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) - NIDA relies on SPI data and findings to assess the intersection of drug use, abuse, dependency and criminal justice to include treatment services. In its well-cited publication, “Principles of drug abuse treatment for criminal justice populations: A research-based guide,” statistics addressed are the percentage of prisoners who reported having received drug treatment since admission, and the percentage who met the criteria for drug abuse or dependence but have not received drug treatment since admission. In 2010, the Director of NIDA testified before Congress in support of treating drug addiction as a disease and references 2004 SPI data in order to highlight the need for improved drug treatment programs for criminal justice populations. A third example of how NIDA uses SPI is observed in a NIDA published research article that discusses interventions to promote successful reentry among parolees with a drug use or abuse problem. Cited is the percentage of drug-dependent inmates who received treatment while incarcerated, those who participated in other types of support programs, and that more than two-thirds of released inmates are rearrested with three years.⁴²

NIH, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) – Similar to CDC, NIMH utilizes SPI to understand the mental health and well-being of inmates and those involved with the criminal justice system. The SPI data help establish the prevalence of inmates with poor mental health, mental health treatment received in facilities and/or the community, co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders, and differences in disciplinary actions received by inmates with and without mental health problems. For example, the NIMH prominently features the 2004 SPI mental health prevalence estimates on its webpage, “Inmate Mental Health.”

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) - SAMHSA is another frequent user of the SPI data. For instance, SAMHSA’s efforts on criminal and juvenile justice issues reference SPI statistics to support the need for improving behavioral health services in reentry and inmate programs as a means to decrease recidivism.⁴³ In a 2010 publication on mental health in the United States, SAMHSA included SPI estimates of the prevalence of a recent history of a mental health problem among prisoners and symptoms of a mental health problem among prisoners.⁴⁴ Lastly, SAMHSA has cited the SPI estimates of the prevalence of mental health problems among prisoners by age, sex, and race/ethnicity in a comprehensive report on behavioral health in the United States.⁴⁵

State and Local Governments. State and local corrections agencies use SPI data as a national benchmark with which to assess conditions within their own jurisdictions. The standardized, national approaches implemented in SPI provide reliable statistics on a range of topics germane to corrections management, some of which are topics they cannot address on a subnational level because their information systems are not designed to track and measure them. Corrections officials have also used SPI information to support claims they have discovered on a local level, and in some instances, have done this to present as evidence to their legislatures to demonstrate a problem and justify an increase or no reduction in funding. For example, the prevalence of mental illness among the prison population has been used to justify the need for additional staff, equipment or training for correctional staff, or particular inmate programs or services. The special topical reports provided through SPI, such as those on incarcerated veterans, inmates with mental illness, and incarcerated parents and their minor children, are sometimes the only source of information available to state and local agencies and are invaluable to them for the purposes of assessment, evaluation, and criminal justice planning. Like federal agencies, many state agencies also utilize SPI data as background and contextual information in solicitations, testimonies, funding announcements, reports, and information requests.

Below are some other specific examples of how different state and local governments, including corrections agencies, have utilized the SPI information.

Colorado – The Legislative Council is the research arm of Colorado’s General Assembly. In 2008, the Colorado Legislative Council Staff prepared an issue brief on persons with mental illness in the criminal justice system that details Colorado’s challenges and response to this topic. Legislative Council Staff conducted their own analysis of the 2004 SPI data to discern that inmates with mental illness are more likely to be incarcerated for violent crimes, have been arrested multiple times, and usually used drugs habitually.⁴⁶

New Jersey ─ The New Jersey Interbranch Advisory Committee on Mental Health Initiatives submitted to the New Jersey Supreme Court a report detailing recommendations to better address the intersection of mental illness and criminal involvement. Mental health prevalence estimates from SPI were used in this report to document the extent to which inmates are mentally ill, prior incarcerations among mentally ill inmates, and rates of coexisting substance use and mental health disorders.⁴⁷ The New Jersey State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a briefing with testimonies on the extent to which the New Jersey Department of Corrections is providing proper accommodations to inmates with non-apparent disabilities, to include mental illnesses. SPI provides the rates of mental health problems among inmates.

Oregon - In an official letter to Senator Alan Bates (D-OR) regarding law enforcement and individuals with mental illness, the Director of the Oregon Public Safety Standards and Training (PSST) references SPI estimates that 24% of prisoners in state facilities and 14% in federal facilities have a history of mental illness. Also reported are the percentages of state and federal inmates who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) IV criteria for a psychotic disorder, and differences between female and male inmates’ mental health rates.

Second, the Oregon Coffee Creek Correctional Facility 2010-2013 Evaluation Report leads off with SPI estimates that establish the number and rate of incarcerated females, the number of incarcerated mothers with minor children, and that most of these mothers will resume parenting roles once released.

Texas ─ The Texas Department of Criminal Justice contacted BJS directly to better understand the national approach to measure the prevalence of suicide attempts among the prison population through SPI.

Vermont - Act 168, Section 1 of the 2014 Session, directed by the Vermont Secretary of Human Services, the Commissioner of Corrections, and the Commissioner of Department for Children and Families to study and develop recommendations for how the state Agency of Human Services can best support and provide for children of incarcerated parents. Per this directive, a comprehensive report on the rights of these children was submitted to the Vermont Legislature which cites 2004 SPI data on the number of impacted children.

Advocacy Groups, Professional Associations, University Centers, and Other Organizations.

Data collected through SPI provide non-government organizations, associations, think tanks, and universities with invaluable information on prison inmates, such as the percentage who committed drug or violent offenses, physical and mental health problems, incarcerated veterans, and children of incarcerated parents. The list below is not exhaustive but it does demonstrate the range of organizations that rely on the data made available through BJS’s prisoner survey.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) - The AECF works to make a safer and healthier future for our nation’s children. One important area is children of incarcerated parents. The AECF has published various reports, primers, resource sheets, etc. on this subject. Publications prior to 2009 routinely cite 1997 SPI data, whereas those published in 2009 or later rely on 2004 SPI data to establish the scope and extent of this issue. Selected publications that utilize 2004 SPI data include: “When a Parent is Incarcerated: A Primer for Social Workers” and “Kinship Care When Parents are Incarcerated: What We Know, What We Can Do”,

Brown University, The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights (The Center) - The Center’s work includes highlighting the state of correctional health in the United States, particularly the prevalence of infectious diseases, mental illness, and addiction among inmates. In order to discuss the health status of prison inmates, The Center’s webpage, “Correctional Health in the United States: Key Issues” incorporates 2004 SPI mental health and substance use prevalence estimates.

Center for Health and Justice at TASC (Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities) (CHJ) - The CHJ works to build, enhance, and sustain strong and healthy communities by promoting policies and practices that stop the cycle of drugs and crime. Per this mission, CHJ produced a special information sheet focused on incarcerated parents and their children. All of the data, to include a bar graph of the rates of incarcerated parents over time, presented in this fact sheet come directly from BJS’s prisoner surveys.⁴⁸

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) – The CSGV formed to address the epidemic of gun violence in our nation. Research and data are essential for understanding how firearms are used in crimes, the type of firearm used, and how these weapons were obtained. SPI provides much of this information used by the CSGV. For example, a blog post about background checks discusses SPI data that nearly 80% of prison inmates incarcerated for gun-related crimes acquired their gun through private transactions.

Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health - Columbia University’s school of public health produced a fact sheet on the intersection of incarceration and public health. Risk factors for incarceration, such as prior prison or probation sentences, come from SPI. In addition, the SPI estimate of the number of children with an incarcerated parent is also featured.⁴⁹

Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP) - Since 1998, the CSDP has published, maintained, and updated an online guide called Drug War Facts. Currently in its sixth edition, SPI estimates are cited throughout. Highlighted data include estimates of the percentage of state and federal inmates who committed their crime to obtain money for drugs; the percentage of inmate with minor children; inmates who met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse and their offense type; and average sentence lengths for drug offenders in its chapter on prisons and jails.⁵⁰

The Correctional Association of New York – As part of their Women in Prison Project, the Correctional Association of New York produced a fact sheet on women in prison. Referenced are 2004 SPI estimates on the percentage of incarcerated mothers and their living arrangements with their minor children prior to incarceration, the rates of pregnancy at time of admission among women in state and federal prison, and the prevalence rates of adverse mental health among female inmates as compared to male inmates.⁵¹

The Council of State Governments Justice Center - This national non-profit organization released a federal action plan to aid children of incarcerated parents, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Open Society Institute. The 2008 BJS report on parents in prison and their minor children, which was based on SPI data, is referenced multiple times in this report. This action plan leads off with the estimate that in 2007 more than 1.7 million minor children had an incarcerated parent in a state or federal facilities. Also included are statistics of incarcerated fathers and mothers who had weekly contact with their children.⁵²

Grantmakers for Children, Youth, and Families (GCYF) - One of the topics addressed by the GCYF is children of incarcerated parents. The 2008 BJS report on parents in prison and their minor children is linked on the GCYF’s recommended reading webpage.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Policy and Research (CGPR) –A research team from CGPR analyzed 2004 SPI data to assess relationships between state gun ownership laws, gun crimes, and gun purchases. They found that 60% percent of persons incarcerated for gun crimes in the thirteen states with the most lax standards for legal firearm ownership were not legally prohibited from possessing firearms when they committed the crime. Results of this study were published in peer-review journals, presented at national conferences, and formed the basis of the 2013 book Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy and Evidence and Analysis edited by CGPR leadership.⁵³ The CGPR is under the direction of Dr. Daniel Webster who testified to Congress in 2013 on background checks and gun crimes, citing statistics generated with the center’s analysis of the 2004 SPI data.

Justice For Vets and the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) - Justice For Vets is a professional services division of the NADCP dedicated to improving the lives and well-being of veterans through the establishment and support of Veterans Treatment Courts. As such, BJS data from SPI on incarcerated veterans is used to support the need for a veteran-specific diversion program.

Justice Policy Institute - The Justice Policy Institute’s newsroom published a 2011 article that asks whether or not data are doing justice for veterans. The prisoner survey is prominently featured in this article, which specifically states the need for BJS to provide updated statistics and information in order to better understand the scope and needs of incarcerated veterans.⁵⁴

Justice Research and Statistics Association (JRSA) - BJS and JRSA co-sponsored national conferences for more than 25 years. BJS statisticians were frequent presenters at this conference, many of whom discussed findings produced from SPI on topics such as mental illness, medical problems, incarcerated parents, and incarcerated veterans. Archived coped of presentations from 2000-2010 are available on the JRSA website.⁵⁵

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) - NAMI is an advocacy group for people with a mental illness, to include those individuals involved with the criminal justice system. As such, NAMI frequently references SPI estimates on the prevalence of mental illness among state and federal prison inmates. NAMI’s webpage on criminalization states SPI data show that approximately half of prison inmates have symptoms or a recent history of a mental health problem. The prevalence rates of mental illness among inmates also appear in a NAMI toolkit on the criminalization of people with mental illness, such as the statistic that 450,000 Americans with a recent history of mental illness are incarcerated.⁵⁶ The Virginia chapter of NAMI also references these mental health prevalence statistics in a state-wide fact sheet on mental illness and the criminal justice system.⁵⁷ Following the publication of BJS’s report on mental illness among prison and jail inmates, generated from SPI data and other sources, the Executive Director of NAMI issued a statement regarding its release and linked the full report at the bottom of the statement.⁵⁸

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA Columbia) - In 2010, CASA Columbia produced a comprehensive report on substance abuse in prison, “Behind Bars II: Substance Use and America’s Prison Population.” This document relies heavily on CASA’s own analysis of the 2004 SPI data in order to present estimates and percentages of whether or not inmates with a substance abuse problem increased over time, re-incarceration rates and past arrest rates among substance-involved offenders, demographic characteristics of these offenders, and those who met the criteria for a substance use disorder and/or a mental health problem.

National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) - The NCSL published a 17 page article on children of incarcerated parents. SPI estimates establish the nature and scope of children with a parent in prison and describe living arrangements before and after incarceration. On page 4 of this article the importance of these data are stressed, “Notwithstanding the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey, accurate estimates are not available on the number of children in foster care who have an incarcerated parent.”⁵⁹

National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) - The NCJRS is a federally-funded resource center that archives justice and drug-related information for use by researchers, policymakers, stakeholders, and any other individual interested in these topics. BJS reports based on SPI data are housed at the NCJRS and publicly available. The NCJRS can be accessed at www.ncjrs.gov.

National Council on Disability (NCD) - The NCD issued a national-level disability policy progress report in 2011. This report presents findings on the current state of people with disabilities in the United States. Included in this document are citations of SPI estimates that attest to the number of inmates with a mental health problem, and those with a possible co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders.⁶⁰

National Research Center (NRC) – The NRC is the operating arm of the National Academies of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. The Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education has a section on Law, Crime, and Justice. Various publications and reports have been produced with the help of SPI data, such as a book on mass incarceration that cites prevalence rates of mental health problems, drug use and dependence, and incarcerated parents generated from the 1997 and 2004 prisoner surveys.⁶¹

The Sentencing Project - The Sentencing Project is a non-profit organization engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy issues. As such, BJS information is central to their mission and BJS received multiple information requests from staff members on drug offenders, offense by race, and women in prison that can be answered with SPI data. A particular issue of focus is the effects of incarceration on children and families and SPI statistics on incarcerated parents with a minor children are frequently referenced in reports and data briefs. These estimates from the 2004 survey appear in a report, “Incarcerated Parents and their Children: Trends 1991-2007,” the white paper, “Video Visits for Children Whose Parents are Incarcerated: In Whose Best Interest?” and a fact sheet, “Parents in Prison.” The latter fact sheet also included 2004 SPI information on the prevalence of infectious diseases among parents in prison. As a last example, this organization also referenced 2004 SPI statistics regarding the disproportionately high prevalence of mental illness among female state prisoners compared to male inmates in their 2007 briefing sheets on women in the justice system.⁶²

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics - The University of Albany maintains an online Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, which publishes various statistical tables. Data from the 2004 SPI study provided some or all the data for several tables, such as race and Hispanic origin data for the prison population and data on incarcerated veterans in state and federal prisons.⁶³

The Texas Civil Rights Project - This group is dedicated to promoting racial, economic, and social justice. They cite 2004 SPI statistics that approximately 10% of inmates in the United States are veterans, with the majority of these combat veterans who served during wartime. This information supports their Justice for Veterans Campaign that aids veterans with physical, mental or behavioral health needs.⁶⁴

Treatment Advocacy Center - The Treatment Advocacy Center’s 2010 publication entitled, “More mentally ill persons are in jail and prisons than hospitals: A survey of the states,” references SPI findings in which 24% of jail inmates and 15% of state prison inmates reported at least one symptom of a psychotic disorder. These and other mental health estimates from the 2004 SPI appear in a number of Treatment Advocacy Center’s online materials.

The Urban Institute - Over the years, the Urban Institute has partnered with BJS on projects and has been a frequent user of SPI data in its publications and reports on criminal justice issues. In particular, data on incarcerated parents are often referenced in Urban Institute’s publications in order to establish the scope of the issue, such as in the article, “Mapping Community Data on Children of Prisoners: Strategies and Insights,” the 2015 research report, “Early Implementation Findings from Responsible Fatherhood Reentry Projects,” and a handbook for researchers and practitioners, “Children of Incarcerated Parents.”

Researchers. Independent researchers have analyzed the SPI data to address a wide range of topics related to incarceration, such as the impact of incarceration on children and families;⁶⁵ the impact of the prison boom on the characteristics of the prison population;⁶⁶ changes in imprisonment rates by social, racial and economic groups;⁶⁷ the labor market and reentry trends and challenges among inmates;⁶⁸ health, illness and health care in the criminal justice system;⁶⁹ infectious disease screenings in correctional settings;⁷⁰ drug and alcohol abuse, dependency and treatment programs for inmates;⁷¹ mental health problems;⁷² homelessness and incarceration;⁷³ punitive sanctions in prison;⁷⁴ violence and accident-related injuries among inmates;⁷⁵ and female offenders in prison.⁷⁶

More specific examples include studies on the prevalence of obesity among adult male prison inmates and prevalence rates of obese inmates with chronic medical conditions.⁷⁷ Researchers also published on differences in prison tobacco control policies, tobacco use, and tobacco-related deaths among inmates.⁷⁸ A team of researchers utilized the 2004 SPI data to examine the impact of Medicaid authorization policies for inmates with schizophrenia.⁷⁹ Graduate students analyzed the data to complete theses or dissertations on topics such as relationships between prison visits and self-reported inmate misconduct,⁸⁰ analyzing predictors of educational program usages within prisons,⁸¹ and diabetes screening in inmates.⁸² Other uses of the data include a statistical handbook that features the data in a statistical modeling example,⁸³ a student textbook entitled Corrections: The Essentials that cites 2004 SPI data to document the increase in the aging prison population,⁸⁴ and a handbook for occupational therapists that discusses the prevalence of mental health problems of prison inmates.⁸⁵

Media. Members of the media use SPI data to inform the public about policy-related issues, emerging issues in corrections, and current trends in the corrections populations. BJS frequently fields information requests from reporters and journalists writing on criminal justice and related topics. Communication with BJS staff regarding SPI data provide direction, guidance, and background information for journalists and reporters. To illustrate, see specific examples below of how the media have used data from SPI.

American Prospect – The American Prospect recently published a longform article on prison employment programs, pay rates, and inmate rights. This article references estimates of the number of inmates with work assignments nationally, the type of job assignments, and the number of inmates with minor children, all of which are from SPI.⁸⁶

Bloomberg News – A reporter used 2004 SPI data on incarcerated veterans in an article examining the intersection of armed services personnel, veterans, and criminal involvement of post-9/11 veterans.

HealthyState.org - An online journalism outlet based in Florida used 2004 SPI data on inmates’ education levels specifically to support or refute the notion that high-school dropouts are more likely to be incarcerated at some point for an article on education and incarceration.

Hechinger Report - The Columbia University-based media outlet published an article on children of incarcerated parents. This article explicitly mentions SPI by name and its set of questions on involvement of incarcerated parents with their minor children. In this same article, it is said that “other than that [SPI] minor children of inmates are not documented in any way that can easily be statistically examined.”⁸⁷ This article was also published verbatim online by The Nation.⁸⁸

Wall Street Journal ─ A reporter used statistical information from SPI on the percentage of inmates in prison and jail with a mental illness as background for two different articles he wrote on mentally ill inmates.

Washington Post – On January 21, 2013, the Washington Post published an article on the claim that 40% of gun sales are performed without a background check. This statistic has been quoted by President Obama and originated from a 1997 BJS report based on SPI data. Leading gun policy researcher Daniel Webster is interviewed and he discusses his analysis of 2004 SPI firearm data and background checks.⁸⁹

Woman’s Day - Woman’s Day recently published an article featuring grandparents who are raising their grandchildren. The author of this story reached out to BJS to request information on children with incarcerated parents; this information is included in the article.⁹⁰

General public and BJS information requests. BJS’s Corrections Unit’s staff receive regular inquiries from ASKBJS, BJS’s online information request mechanism from a variety of people, from elected officials to college students. The general public uses SPI data for a wide range of purposes, including to make informed decisions about crime and prison inmates in order to learn more about the issues, conduct informal research, advance a particular interest, develop policy, or shape criminal justice planning. To illustrate the variety of requests BJS receives, a few specific examples follow, but they do not represent the full spectrum or volume of requests BJS receives on a regular basis about questions that can only be answered with SPI data.

• A staffer from the Congressional Budget Office asked for estimates of state and federal inmates with a high school degree/GED and those with less than a high school education.

• A Congressional Research Service employee requested information on whether or not an inmate was employed in the month before arrest, had ever used drugs, used drugs in the month before arrest, regularly used drugs, and their education level. These variables were to be part of a logistic regression model constructed with 1997 and 2004 SPI data.

• A request for inmate employment information came from the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Workforce Investment, Division of National Programs, Tools, and Technical Assistance.

• A request for federal prisoners’ employment status and financial condition at the time of their federal arrests came from a U.S. Sentencing Commission employee.

• State Senator Mark Wyland’s office in Northern San Diego requested estimates on prior substance abuse by inmates, educational attainment, and substance abusers who did not complete high school.

• Students periodically send information requests for school papers on correctional topics. SPI data or its related BJS reports often fulfill this student need. Professors regularly contact BJS about SPI information to supplement their lectures about criminology and criminal justice.

• The Executive Director of the British Society of Criminology requested various types of information from the 1997 and 2004 prisoner surveys.

• Harmony Adoptions of Tennessee contacted BJS for the number of currently incarcerated inmates who were in the foster care system at any point in their life; SPI was able to provide these estimates.

• Employees from blackapple.org and the Marshall Project have made repeated data requests on social justice and criminal justice topics such as inmate rights and prison work assignments.

The SPI data and documentation are archived at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) for use by the public. According to ICSPR user data of the 2004 SPI dataset alone, approximately 121 publications have used the 2004 data. This includes 63 journal articles, 22 reports, 18 theses or dissertations, 7 books or book chapters, and 5 conference proceedings. These counts, however, do not include the many other reports, testimonies, and materials that reference BJS statistics and reports that were only possible because of the SPI data, some of which were described previously in this section.

3. Use of Information Technology

The status of data collection within each prison will be documented through the SPI web portal, based on a model successfully used by RTI for NIS. As with the NISweb, this system will be used to manage all information collected from and provided to the facilities (see Part B, Section 2 Procedures for Information Collection for more information). Facility information from the frame (e.g., facility name, address, number of inmates, jurisdiction) will be preloaded into SPIweb once the sample is drawn (see Part B, Section 1 Universe and Respondent Selection for more information about the SPI sample). In addition, as RTI Logistic Managers establish contact with the facilities about data collection, they will enter relevant information into the system. The system will include several important components, including the following −

• facility personnel and contact information

• an activity/contact log

• a scheduling tool to estimate the number of interviewers and days needed in each facility

• managing/scheduling of field teams/interviewers

• background check requirements and tracking

• roster information and tracking

• facility policies and interview space

• documentation of facility issues

• facility-specific and project-wide reports

This web portal and its components will increase the efficiency of communication across project teams and ensure RTI project staff, interviewer teams, and facilities are clear about agreed upon schedules and collection procedures.

The scheduling component of SPIweb will be particularly critical. This tool allows the Logistics Managers to indicate how many interviewers the facility can accommodate, how many days and hours the facility will allow interviewing, the current facility population, and other necessary information. The tool uses this information to estimate the number of days required to complete data collection and allows Logistics Managers to schedule days of data collection for each facility, without running the risk of double-booking a team of interviewers. Using such a tool allows RTI to balance their interviewing capacity against a facility’s resources to accommodate facilities as much as possible and ensure data collection is completed in the shortest amount of time possible to reduce burden on facilities.

The SPIweb will be updated nightly with information transmitted from the field. It will generate daily production reports for RTI project staff and reports to show the progress of data collection for both RTI project staff and BJS.

To collect the survey data from inmates, RTI will employ CAPI technology, whereby field interviewers will collect interview data from respondents using laptop computers (see Attachment A2 – CAPI Screenshot). CAPI interviewing methods will enable the most efficient navigation within the instrument and administration of the questionnaire to minimize burden to respondents. Use of an automated questionnaire will ensure the proper flow of the interview through built-in skip patterns, eliminating any problems due to routing since interviewers cannot miss questions or ask the wrong ones. CAPI interviewing produces highly accurate data through built-in consistency and edit checks and reduces the post-collection processing time since composite and calculated variables can be created and stored within the instrument during the interview. Additionally, CAPI will allow for customizing question text, based on respondents’ previous answers, which will increase the ease of asking questionnaire items and decrease the respondents’ cognitive burden associated with some of the questions. The CAPI questionnaire will be programmed in the Blaise software package; a widely-used computer assisting interviewing technology.

RTI will control individual interview cases using an interactive case management system (CMS). Standard functions of the CMS include tracking the current status of each case registered by the interviewer including the current result code, time and date of last status update, and the ability for the interviewer to enter any specific notes about a case when relevant. All interviewers will have the ability to interview any inmate within a facility so the CMS provides the capability for an interviewer to create a case for any given inmate when interviewing takes place. Data files containing the list of sampled inmates will be sent to each interviewer’s laptop prior to beginning data collection in a facility. The CMS uses this list when registering a case to ensure that the ID and inmate name are correct without the interviewer having to manually enter them.

The automated instrument and CMS will work seamlessly to create, assign, control, and transmit cases during the 2016 SPI data collection. The CMS will allow the instrument to automatically update the status of each case as it is worked and enable the interviewer to interactively update interviewing outcome codes to reflect the final outcome of the interview attempt. The interviewer will also be able, in the CMS, to document the inmate’s decision regarding participation in the survey and the linkage of survey data to criminal records (i.e., RAP sheets) and other governmental administrative records accessible through CARRA.

Data will be electronically transmitted from the field each night using an encrypted transmission system. Data will be housed within RTI’s standard secure computer system which is password protected and protected by access privileges which are assigned by the appropriate system administrator. The data will be delivered to BJS using a Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) Self Extracting Archive.⁹¹ The archive can be decrypted using a single password that RTI will provide to BJS separately from the data. This method of encryption and data delivery will maintain Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliance. All systems are backed up on a regular basis and are kept in a secure storage facility. To protect the identities of the respondents, no identifying information will be kept on the final survey file. With respect to personnel, all RTI employees are required to sign a pledge of confidentiality. This pledge requires employees to maintain confidentiality of project data and to follow the above procedures when handling confidential information.

3. Efforts to Identify Duplication

BJS completed reviews of other BJS surveys, other federal and association collections, and the literature in order to identify any duplication. The reviews were conducted by searching NACJD, ICPSR, NCJRS, and websites of other federal agencies, non-profits, and professional corrections associations. These searches led to the conclusion that SPI is not duplicated by any other agency or organization. No other entity or program collects nationwide, comprehensive information on the characteristics of the state and federal prison population across a diverse range of topics like the 2016 SPI.

Related BJS surveys include NIS, NPS, and NCRP. As a result of PREA, BJS fielded NIS in 2007, then again in 2008-2009 and 2011-2012. Because PREA required BJS to estimate the prevalence of sexual victimization among prisoners and jail inmates, the content of the questionnaire focused primarily on that topic. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, the NIS survey had several design features to maximize confidentiality. One of those features was to randomize inmates to receive either the sexual victimization survey or an alternative survey for which the primary topics were either alcohol and drug use and treatment (2007 NIS; 2008-2009 NIS) or mental health, medical conditions, and treatment (2011-2012 NIS). This feature made it difficult for other inmates and correctional staff to know which survey respondents received. Another feature to maximize confidentiality was to ensure all respondents spent about the same amount of time completing the survey, regardless of which version they received. While the fielding of NIS and these design features, particularly the data collected through the alternative surveys, did provide BJS with some data that have been traditionally gathered through SPI and therefore can and has been used by BJS to fill some information gaps, NIS cannot serve as a substitute for SPI particularly as it includes no questions on a number of topics planned for SPI.

For example, NIS did not include detailed socioeconomic indicators, beyond education, such as pre-prison employment, amount of income and sources, and health insurance. It did not address inmates’ current offense, criminal history, or sentences of inmates in as much detail as the SPI questionnaire will, and there are no questions to understand the incident characteristics and harms caused to their victims. It also did not include questions designed to understand family structure and background of inmates, firearm use during a crime or obtainment, pro-social connections, pre-prison living arrangements, program participation and motivation to participate, parenting and minor children, etc. In addition, whereas SPI will provide data on all topics covered in the survey for all inmates, because of the design features of NIS, the data that are available through the alternative surveys are for a subset of inmates and are limited as they do not address important covariates/risk factors of particular issue. For example, while the 2007 and 2008-2009 NIS surveys provide information on alcohol and drug use and treatment, those data cannot be analyzed with the data collected through the 2011-2012 survey on the mental health status of inmates to understand the extent of drug use among mentally ill inmates or the rate of co-occurring disorder.

BJS conducts NPS and NCRP annually. NPS collects aggregate counts from state departments of corrections (DOCs) and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on the size of the prison population, the number admitted to and released from prisons, and basic demographics such as sex and race/ethnicity. NCRP collects individual-level, administrative records from almost all DOCs in the United States on four cohorts; persons admitted to prison, those released from prison, those held in prison at yearend, and discharges from post-custody community supervision (PCCS). It also collects information beyond the data collected through NPS such as age, offense, sentence, and time served. However, neither of these programs gathers the volume of data on the characteristics of the prison population that are collected through SPI nor are they able to collect the level of detail on particular topics, as some of the information can only be gathered through in-person interviews using a national, standardized approach.

Through the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), NCES conducts a large-scale study with a nationally representative sample of about 5,000 adults in the United States, as well as a sample of about 1,500 inmates incarcerated in state and federal correctional facilities. The goal of PIAAC is to assess and compare the basic skills and the broad range of competencies of adults around the world.⁹² The prisoner questionnaire focuses on collecting information about various educational and training activities in prison, such as participation in academic programs and ESL classes, experiences with prison jobs, and involvement in vocational training and nonacademic programs such as employment readiness classes. While SPI also covers these topics and more, these topics are the focus of the PIAAC study and therefore more detail (e.g., time spent in programs, certifications) is collected through the PIAAC survey compared to SPI. There are some other similarities among the two surveys, such as both collect information on pre-prison employment and number of children, but SPI also collects information on pre-prison income and sources of income, and more information about their children including living arrangements, contact, and child support that the PIAAC does not capture. Another difference between the two studies that should not be overlooked is that sample size in SPI (about 33,200 inmates will sampled to yield a minimum of 23,200 completed interviews) will be significantly larger than the prison sample in the PIAAC study, which means the statistical power and analytic capabilities (e.g., crosstabs by various characteristics) through SPI will be much greater than those through the PIAAC study.

Through the searches, BJS also identified a few other inmate-level surveys, but they are not national surveys and typically have a much narrower and more targeted focus than the 2016 SPI. For example, BOP has conducted an annual Prison Social Climate Survey. This survey, however, only includes targeted, low-security prisons and is not nationally representative. Data are collected from both facility staff and inmates and are used to produce facility-level estimates. Additionally, the focus of this survey is largely on social climate and prison environments, which is not a topic specifically addressed in the 2016 SPI. Some states and/or localities have also conducted inmate surveys on a subnational scale such as, the Correctional Association of New York’s 2008 survey of male inmates at Marcy Correctional Facility; the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s state survey of California Inmates; and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction’s survey of death row inmates in the Chillicothe Correctional Institute.

3. Efforts to Minimize Burden

This research does not involve small businesses or other small entities. The respondents are inmates held in adult correctional facilities.

3. Consequences of Less Frequent Collection

Historically, SPI has been a collection that BJS has only fielded periodically to minimize burden on the correctional field and costs to taxpayers. Prior to the 2004 SPI, the survey was fielded every five to six years since the 1970s. However, it has been over 10 years since BJS last conducted a national omnibus survey of prisoners. BJS regularly receives requests from various stakeholders for updated information that is only available through SPI and at this point, BJS is unable to fulfill those types of requests. Changes in the prison population have been observed recently, such as annual declines in the population in some recent years, and states have been faced with budget constraints that are requiring them to focus on cost-effective strategies intended to reduce the prison population while improving outcomes of offenders. The SPI data are critical to understanding the impact of these reforms on the U.S. prison population and determining whether the investments are resulting in the intended outcomes, including ensuring public safety.

This iteration of SPI is important for providing information on the prison population and continuity of data on prison inmates needed for criminal justice system planning and to make timely and informed decisions regarding corrections policy development and evaluation. Also, as the CNSTAT report revealed and the President’s FY2016 proposed budget addresses, there is a need for BJS to invest in additional endeavors to assess recidivism and reentry issues more broadly and more frequently. The 2016 SPI provides a number of opportunities to meet those needs, as previously described in this package. Updated information is also important to ensure that BJS is able to report reliable, annual estimates on the prison population through NPS, as that collection relies on the SPI data to adjust the estimates of race/ethnicity to overcome state reporting challenges to comply with OMB racial categories.

3. Special Circumstances

No special circumstances have been identified for this project. The collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6

3. Adherence to 5 CFR 1320.8(d) and Outside Consultations

The research under this clearance is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6. Comments on this data collection were solicited in the Federal Register for a 60 and 30 day period. No comments were received in response to the information provided.

When developing the 2016 study, 1BJS consulted with various experts representing different stakeholders, including federal, state, and local corrections administrators and practitioners; substantive experts in various fields including physical and behavioral health, health care, firearm violence and acquisitions, veterans; other government agencies; representatives from professional organizations; academics; and survey methodologists. Stakeholders were given an opportunity to review the SPI questionnaire at various stages of development to provide input on the topics, the constructs it will measure, and the specific questions that will be asked. BJS relied on the input received to prioritize the content of the questionnaire and make difficult decisions about the exclusion of particular topics/constructs to ensure the interview is of a reasonable length to maximize response and data quality and minimize burden. The following experts have been consulted −

Busi Akanbi

Court Services & Offender Sup. Agency

633 Indiana Ave, NW

Washington, DC 20004

Ted Alcorn

Research Director

Everytown for Gun Safety

talcorn@everytown.org

Roseanna Ander

Executive Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

209 LaSalle St. Suite 625

Chicago, Il 60604

Jeff Beard, PhD

Secretary

CA Dept. of Corrections & Rehabilitation

1515 S St., Sacramento, CA 95811-7243

Dave Bierie, PhD

Research Director

DOJ, Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention

810 7^th St. NW Washington, DC 20531

Erin Boyar

Rhode Island Department of Corrections

Planning & Research Unit

18 Wilma Schesler Ln, Dix Bldg, 1^st Floor

Cranston, RI 02920

Jeff Buck

Senior Advisor for Behavioral Health, Center for Strategic Planning

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

7500 Security Blvd

Windsor Mills, MD 21244

Bret Bucklen

Chief of Research, Evaluation, and Projects

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

2520 Lisburn Road

Camp Hill, PA 17001

Shawn Bushway, PhD

Professor, Dept. of Public Admin. & Policy

Univ. at Albany, State Univ. of New York

1400 Washington Ave.

Albany, NY 12222

Lisa Colpe, PhD, MPH

Chief, Office of Clinical & Population Epidemiology Research, Div. of Services & Intervention Research

National Institute of Mental Health

Rm 7143, Mailstop 9635

6001 Executive Blvd.

Bethesda, MD 20892

Michael Connelly

(Ret.) Administrator, Eval & Analysis Unit,

Oklahoma Department of Correction

601 S 124th St. W

Taft, OK 74463s

Philip Cook, PhD

Professor, Public Policy, Econ. & Sociology

Duke University

215 Sanford Building
Durham, NC 27708-0245

Matthew T. DeMichele, PhD

Senior Research Associate

American Probation and Parole Association

P.O. Box 11910

Lexington, KY 40578

David Ensley

Chief, Bureau of Research & Data Analysis

Florida Department of Corrections

501 South Calhoun Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-2500

Ingrid Golstrom, M.Sc.

Social Science Analyst,

Center for Mental Health Services

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

1 Choke Cherry, Room 2-1081

Rockville, MD 20857

Greg Greenberg, PhD

Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry

Yale University School of Medicine

300 George St., Suite 901
New Haven, CT 06511

Joe Gfroerer

(Ret.) Director, Division of Population Surveys, Office of Applied Studies

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
1 Choke Cherry Rd
Rockville, MD 20850

Claire Gunster-Kirby

(Ret.) Chief of PreTrial Services

Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation

12500-C Ardennes Ave
Rockville, Maryland 20852

Miles Harer

Office of Research & Evalulation.

Federal Bureau of Prison

320 First St NW, Washington, DC 20534

Richard Harris

University of Chicago Crime Lab

209 LaSalle St. Suite 625

Chicago, Il 60604

Frank Hecht

Corrections Administrator

Tohono O’odham Nation Corrections

Sells, AZ 85634

Martin Horn

Distinguished Lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

899 Tenth Ave., Room 422-T

New York, NY 10019

Kimberly Houser

Assistant Professor

Rowan University

201 Mullica Hill Rd.

Glassboro, NJ 08028

Ginny Hutchinson

Chief, Jails Division

National Institute of Corrections

320 First St NW

Washington, DC 20534

Calvin Johnson, PhD

Director of Research and Evaluation

Court Serv. & Offender Supervision Agency

601 Indiana Ave NW

Washington, DC 20004

Ronald Kessler, PhD

Professor, Dept. of Health Care Policy

Harvard Medical School

180 Longwood Ave.

Boston, MA 02115-5899

Rhiana Kohl, PhD

Exec. Director,

Office of Strategic Planning & Research

Massachusetts Department of Corrections

965 Elm Street

Concord, MA 01742

Paul Korotkin

Director, Progm Planning, Research & Eval

NY State Dept of Correctional Services

Bldg. 2, State Campus

Albany, NY 12226-2050

Neil Langan

Office of Research and Evaluation

Federal Bureau of Prisons

320 First Street NW.

Washington, D.C. 20534 

Marc Mauer

Executive Director

The Sentencing Project

1705 DeSales St., NW, 8^th Floor

Washington, DC 20036

James McGuire, PhD

VA Program Manager, Healthcare for Reentry Veterans Program

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

810 Vermont Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20420

Linda Mellgren, PhD

Senior Soc. Sci. Analyst, Office of Assistant. Secretary for Planning & Eval

U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services

200 Independence Ave. SW

Washington, DC 20201

Angela Moore

Division Director,

Justice Systems Research Division

National Institute of Justice

810 Seventh Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20531

Ashley Nellis

The Sentencing Project

1705 De Sales Street, NW, 8^th Floor

Washington, DC 20036

Mark Overstreet

Senior Researcher

National Rifle Association

11250 Waples Mill Rd

Fairfax, VA 22030

Susan Parker

Research Manager

University of Chicago Crime Lab

209 LaSalle St. Suite 625

Chicago, Il 60604

Becky Pettit, PhD

Associate Professor and Associate Chair Department of Sociology

University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98105

Susan Phillips, PhD

Research Analyst

The Sentencing Project

1705 DeSales Street, NW, 8^th Floor

Washington, DC 20036

Harold Pollack

Co-Director

University of Chicago Crime Lab

209 LaSalle St. Suite 625

Chicago, Il 60604

Lettie Prell

Director of Research

Iowa Department of Corrections

515 Water St

Sioux City, IA 51103

Dan Rosenbaum

Research Specialist

University of Chicago Crime Lab

209 LaSalle St. Suite 625

Chicago, Il 60604

Michael Schoenbaum, PhD

Senior Advisor for Mental Health Services, Epidemiology, & Economics

National Institute of Mental Health,

6001 Executive Blvd, Rm 7142, MSC 9629

Bethesda, MD 20892-9669

Larry Thomas

(Ret.) Operations Auditor

Shelby County Sheriff’s Office

201 Poplar Ave.

Memphis, TN 38103

Robert Trestman, PhD, MD

Professor of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center

263 Farmington Ave.

Farmington, CT 06030

Steve Vandine

Chief, Bureau of Research & Evaluation

Ohio Dept of Rehabilitation and Correction

770 West Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43222

Carl Wicklund

Executive Director

American Probation and Parole Association

P.O. Box 11910

Lexington, KY 40578

Brie Williams, MD

Associate Professor, Medicine – Division of Geriatrics and Associate Director of Tideswell

University of California – San Francisco

UCSF PO BOX 0120

San Francisco, CA 94143

Garen Wintemute, MD, MPH

Director, Violence Prevention Research Program, Department of Emergency Medicine

University of California – Davis

2315 Stockton Blvd.

Sacramento, CA 95817

3. Paying Respondents

Respondents will not receive any financial incentives. However, pending approval from individual departments of corrections, we will provide each inmate with a light snack which would have to be consumed during the interview. No inmate will be permitted to leave the interviewing area with food. Our experience conducting NIS demonstrated that offering snacks led to a 6% increase in participation.

3. Assurance of Confidentiality

In accordance with the provisions of Title 42, United States Code, Sections 3735 and 3789g, any information collected through SPI that identifies individuals will be held confidential and “shall be gathered in a manner that precludes their use for law enforcement or any purpose relating to a particular individual other than statistical or research purposes” (see Attachment A1 ─ BJS Authorizing Statute and Attachment A3 ─ Title 42 USC 3789g).

Prior to beginning the interview, the interviewers will read the consent document to inmates to obtain their verbal consent to participate in the study, and will offer a copy of the form to inmates (see Attachment A4 – Interview Consent CAPI Testing Form and Attachment A5 – Interview Consent National Study Form; see Part B, Section 2 Procedures for Information Collection for more information about this process). The consent form assures confidentiality to all respondents and explains that their information is protected by a Privacy Certificate, that their participation is completely voluntary, that no identifying information will be released, and that information they provide during the interview is prohibited from use in any legal action. All interviews will be conducted in a private location to maximize confidentiality.

BJS and RTI have procedures in place to guard against the disclosure of personally identifiable information. As required under Title 42, United States Code, Section 3789, BJS and RTI will take all necessary steps to mask the identity of survey respondents, including suppression of demographic characteristics and other potentially identifying information if necessary, especially in situations in which sample sizes are small. The SPI data will be maintained under the security provisions outlined in the U.S. Department of Justice regulation 28 CFR § 22.23 which can be reviewed at www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bjsmpc.pdf.

All names and personal identifiers will be removed from the data files prior to their submission to NACJD, which serves as the public repository for all BJS datasets. Moreover, as required under these Sections, any BJS report using these data will only be statistical in nature and will not identify individual subjects; products will reflect primarily national estimates and possibly some jurisdiction-level estimates.

BJS and RTI will request review and approval of the SPI questionnaire and study protocols from RTI’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that the data collection procedures are in compliance with human subjects’ protection protocols and confidentiality regulations. Approval by the IRB is currently pending.

3. Justification for Sensitive Questions

Most questions in the proposed 2016 questionnaire are not considered sensitive for an inmate population. While some sections of the SPI questionnaire may be sensitive for a noninstitutionalized population, such as those about criminal history, mental health, or prior drug use, these are not considered sensitive topics for an inmate population. It is evident that this population has a criminal history based on the simple fact that they are in prison serving time for a crime. Prior to incarceration, inmates typically know their criminal history information is available to third parties at various stages of the criminal justice process, including arrest, prosecution, and sentencing. They are also aware that facilities have this information and that some even make this information available to the public, such as on DOC websites. In addition, inmates are screened at intake, and during various stages of their sentence, to assess their physical and mental health status and to determine if they have substance abuse problems. They are familiar with answering questions about topics of this nature, as inmates know facilities use the information for various reasons, such as to assess their risk to themselves, other inmates, and correctional staff; to determine the appropriate housing unit to place or move them to enhance their safety and the safety of other inmates and correctional staff; to determine treatment needs; and to assess programming eligibility.

3. Estimate of Respondent Burden

BJS has estimated the total respondent burden for the proposed 2016 SPI at 50,099 hours for 66,938 responses. This estimate is based on the number of sampled facilities and inmates, not the number of expected participating facilities and inmates which relies on assumptions about nonresponse rates. Therefore, this estimate represents the maximum burden hours expected for the CAPI feasibility test and national study activities, including obtaining rosters from sampled facilities, prison staff escorting inmates to and from interview rooms, inmates completing the consent process and survey request, and post-survey follow-up with DOCs/BOP.

Based on BJS’s experience with other inmate surveys, such as NIS, it is estimated that it will take approximately 0.5 hours for a staff member from each facility to provide a roster of inmates incarcerated in their facility. This includes working with RTI staff to provide an initial roster of inmates and an updated roster on the first day of data collection. Since the sample of inmates will be completed by RTI statisticians, the completion of these procedures will not put additional burden on the respondent. Additionally, facility staff will spend 0.5 hours per inmate to escort them to and from the interviewing room.

Prior to initiating the main data collection, a small pretest of a sample of 60 inmates from two facilities will be conducted to test the functionality of the CAPI instrument to ensure it is routing inmates correctly through the questionnaire. It is estimated that each inmate will spend approximately 60 minutes to complete the consent process and the survey.

The national study will consist of a sample of 416 state and federal facilities from which approximately 33,200 inmates will be sampled to participate.⁹³ As with the pretest, each inmate is expected to take approximately 60 minutes to complete the consent process and the survey.

The total respondent burden, including both prison staff and inmates, is summarized in Table A1.

3. Estimate of Respondent’s Cost Burden

The total respondent cost includes the facility staff time to prepare and verify the inmate selection roster and escort 33,200 potential respondents to an interview location. It is estimated that the facility staff will be available for approximately 16,839 hours to complete the interview process. This includes 209 hours for providing the rosters and 16,630 hours for escorting inmates to and from the interview site. At an estimate of $36.23 per hour for 209 hours and $25.64 per hour for 16,630 hours, the respondent cost burden for the 2016 SPI is estimated at $433,965.

3. Costs to Federal Government

The total estimated cost to the government for this collection is $9,380,240. This includes $630,720 of BJS costs associated with leading the design, implementation, and management of the 2016 SPI study. These costs also include analysis and reporting activities as well as the dissemination of the findings and data. Costs of the data collection agent are estimated at $8,749,520. These costs include providing input and expertise on the design and administration of SPI and implementing the plans, data collection, some analysis, some reporting activities, and the overall management of the 2016 SPI project. See Table A2 for more details.

3. Reason for Change in Burden

There has been a change in the respondent burden since the 2004 SPI study. The respondent burden increased because of an increase in the number of sampled facilities and inmates in order to minimize burden on individual facilities while also ensuring enhanced levels of precision for key national estimates of state and federal inmates, and subnational estimates for jurisdictions with 100,000 or more prisoners. Also, the estimated burden reported in this supporting statement is the maximum burden expected which is based on the number of sampled facilities and inmates, not the number of expected participating facilities and inmates which relies on assumptions about nonresponse rates.

3. Project Schedule and Publication Plans

Pending approval from OMB, the CAPI feasibility test is scheduled to begin in early September 2015. During that month, BJS also plans to “introduce” the 2016 SPI study to all 50 state DOCs and BOP by sending a letter to each commissioner and a flyer that was designed to inform a variety of stakeholders about the key aspects of the study (see Part B, Section 2 Procedures for Information Collection and Section 3 Methods to Maximize Response for more information). In late September, the commissioners of jurisdictions with sampled facilities will be sent a letter to obtain approval for the study and to provide a list of the facilities selected. A different letter will be sent to commissioners of jurisdictions with no sampled facilities to notify them that no facilities in their jurisdiction were sampled in the study. From this time through December 2015, RTI will work directly with sampled prisons to schedule data collection.

Data collection through personal interviews with the inmates will occur in two cycles to optimize scheduling and staffing of field operations. The first training session of interviewers and field supervisors will occur in January 2016, and the first cycle of data collection will begin directly following that training session and will continue through mid-April 2016. The second training session of field staff will occur at the end of April 2016 and the second cycle of data collection will begin directly following. By the end of August 2016, the second cycle of data collection is scheduled to end.

BJS and RTI will begin planning and working on statistical products while the SPI survey is still in the field. The goal of this effort is to enhance the timeliness of the release of findings once the final data file is available, which is scheduled to be delivered to BJS in November 2016. This work will begin in May 2016 and will continue through December of that year. In addition, during this time frame the data will be processed and weighting and imputation will be done.

Once the SPI data are available at the end of 2016, BJS plans to release an average of about six topical products annually over the next several years. The topics will be prioritized based on 1) content to address the priority issues in corrections currently and those that fit within the SPI framework of “harms, risk, and reentry”, and 2) resource constraints in order to develop a reporting plan that is feasible. The type of product used to address a topic will vary depending on the topic(s). BJS’s statistical tables product can be used to address a particular criminal justice population, a special offender population, or a specific topic. Statistical tables provide an abundance of results in tables and/or figures with a limited amount of text that only highlights the most important findings. A statistics brief is used to address a single topic with a limited amount of information (e.g., a couple figures or tables). This type of product is organized around specific research questions that are identified in the brief and answered with the information included. A special report is used to investigate more complex topics and hypotheses as well as to identify and describe covariates. This product summarizes substantively and statistically significant results on the topic and typically includes a variety of tables (e.g., report tables, appendix tables) and graphical displays of the statistics.

BJS expects to release the first set of SPI findings in the first quarter of 2017. This product will be a set of statistical tables that are titled A Profile of State and Federal Prisoners, 2016. Statistics that describe inmates over of variety of domains, such as demographics, socioeconomic status, criminal justice status at arrest, offense, characteristics of the incident that led to the offense, sentence length, time served, and criminal history, will be included in the tables. This product will also address trends in the prison population by including similar measures from the 1991 and 1997 inmate surveys. Various stakeholders have communicated to BJS that this type of product has been very useful in the past because it provides an abundance of information in one source.

After the release of the statistical tables described above, BJS plans to release a variety of substantive and technical reports using the 2016 SPI data. For example, the first topical report BJS plans to release in the first quarter of 2017 will be titled Prisoner Use and Acquisition of Firearms. This product will be a statistics brief that provides national statistics of prisoners who possessed a firearm during the offense that led to their incarceration. It will also describe how prisoners obtained the firearms, including legal and illegal sources, and assess changes in the patterns of firearm use and acquisitions over time by relying on data from prior prisoner surveys.

The estimated SPI publication schedule and product types are −

2017

Statistical tables

• A Profile of State and Federal Prisoners, 2016

Statistical tables

• Education and Employment Background of Prisoners

Statistics brief

• Prisoner Use and Acquisition of Firearms

• Prisoners Never to Be Released

Special report

• Severity of Attributes of Criminal Victimization Incidents that are Punished by Incarceration

• Explaining Imprisonment Rates in Relation to Socioeconomic Status and Criminal Involvement

• Drug Offenders Sentenced to Serve Time in Prison

• Prisoner Reentry: Soon-to-be-Released Inmates

2018

Statistical tables

• Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children

• Substance Use and Dependence among State and Federal Prisoners

Statistics brief

• Medical Problems of State and Federal Prisoners

• Indicators of Mental Illness among Prisoners

Special report

• Racial Disparities in Imprisonment: Extent to which Attributes of Offenders Explain Racial Disparities

• Lifetime Likelihood of Incarceration

2019

Statistical tables

• Inmate Misconduct

Statistics brief

• Women in Prison: Changes in the Female Prison Population

• Longitudinal Analysis of Cigarette Use among Prisoners

Special report

• Family Background and Structure of Prisoners over Time

• Prisoner Programming: Inmate Participation and Motivation

• Incarcerated Veterans: Physical and Behavioral Health Problems

BJS is also planning to release a few technical reports resulting from the 2016 SPI study and other sources. Preliminary technical reports include −

• Mode Effects Administering the K6 Distress Scale to a Prison Population (estimated publication date 2017)

• Comparison of Self-Reports and Administrative Records for Measuring Criminal Histories (estimated publication date 2018)

• Extent to Which RAP Sheets Capture Weapon Use when Committing Offenses (estimated publication date 2018)

• Effects of Survey Mode on Reporting of Race/Hispanic Origin in a Prison Population (estimated publication date 2019)

Resource dependent, BJS also intends to host an online data analysis tool that would allow the public to perform longitudinal comparisons of several key measures from the 1991, 1997, 2004, and 2016 SPI studies. BJS would like to provide users with the ability to disaggregate these measures (including crime type, weapon use, program participation, family characteristics, etc.) by sex and race/ethnicity, although small sample sizes for some of the combinations might result in masking to protect privacy. BJS anticipates release of this analysis tool in 2019.

Once BJS releases the first topical report, the 2016 SPI data and documentation will be archived at ICPSR. Researchers can download the files of the SPI data and codebooks to conduct their own analyses. One data file will be completely accessible to the public and another will be a restricted file which means if a user is interested in obtaining access to the restricted file, they must complete and sign an agreement form which includes describing the research project and data protection plan, and obtaining IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research. Directly identifying information will be stripped from both files but the public-use file (i.e., non-restricted file) will exclude additional information (e.g., design variables necessary to produce direct variance estimates) to preserve the confidentiality of respondents. In addition, prior to archiving the SPI materials, RTI will conduct a disclosure analysis to further preserve the confidentiality of survey respondents. If a risk of disclosure is revealed, RTI will implement a treatment plan to reduce the risk, which could include options such as perturbation methods (e.g., data swapping), recoding/collapsing levels of variables, and suppressing additional variables (e.g., using replicate weights that allow design variables such as facility identifier to be suppressed). BJS and RTI will ensure the treatment applied to the 2016 SPI data results in public-use and restricted-use files that provide consistent results when analyzed by a user and in comparison to results published in BJS products.

3. Plans to Not Display Expiration Date of OMB Approval

Not Applicable.

3. Exception to the Certificate Statement

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

1 The 23,200 represents the expected number of completed interviews not the number of prisoners sampled (approximately 33,200). The number of completed interviews accounts for inmate nonresponse. See Part B of this supporting statement, specifically Section 1 Universe and Respondent Selection, for more information.

2 This pilot study was approved by OMB through the BJS generic clearance OMB No. 1121-0339 and expiration date 01/31/2016.

3 Prior iterations of BJS’s national survey of prisoners were known as the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities (SISFCF). The first survey of state prisoners was fielded in 1974 and periodically thereafter in years 1979, 1986, 1991, 1997, and 2004. The first survey of federal prisoners was fielded in 1991 along with the survey of state prisoners, and both have been fielded at the same time since 1991.

4 Carson, E.A. (2014). Prisoners in 2013. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

5 Pattison, S. & Streepey, M. (2013). State Spending for Corrections: Long-Term Trends and Recent Criminal Justice Policy Reforms. Washington, DC: The National Association of State Budget Officers.

6 Kyckelhahn, T. (2012). State Corrections Expenditures, FY 1982-2010. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

7 That project was the Survey of Prison Inmates: Design and Testing Project (Award Number 2009-BJ-CX-K054). It was funded by BJS through a Cooperative Agreement.

8 The K6 is a six-item scale developed by Dr. Ronald Kessler and colleagues for estimating the prevalence of nonspecific psychological distress in noninstitutionalized settings. The scale has proven to predict symptoms associated with serious mental illness. It has been widely used in epidemiological surveys in the United States, including NHIS, and internationally.

9 Groves, R. & Cork, D. (Eds.) (2009). Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics. Washington, DC: National Research Council of the National Academies. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu.

10 Office of Management and Budget (2015). Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2016. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Analytical_Perspectives/.

11 Written testimony by Daniel Webster, Professor and Director Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research for the hearing before the US Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. “Proposals to Reduce Gun Violence: Protecting Our Communities While Respecting the Second Amendment.” February 2013.

12 Statement of Richard Durbin, US Senator and Chairman, for the US Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. “Human Rights at Home: Mental Illness in US Prisons and Jails.” September 2009.

13 Statement of Benjamin B. Tucker, Deputy Director for State, Local and Tribal Affairs, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the President to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. “Drug and Veterans Treatment Courts: Seeking Cost-Effective Solutions for Protecting Public Safety and Reducing Recidivism.” July 19, 2011

14 Testimony of Mr. Mason Bishop, Deputy Assistant Secretary, US Department of Labor to the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation. September 21, 2006.

15 Testimony of Albert Mercer, Executive Director, Veterans Leadership Program of Western Pennsylvania at the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary Committee on Crime and Drugs Field Hearing. “Evaluating the Need for Greater Federal Resources to Establish Veterans Courts.” March 1, 2010.

16 Testimony of Nora D. Volkow, Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse National Institutes of Health Department of Health and Human Services Testimony before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Unites States House of Representatives. “Treating Addiction as a Disease: The Promise of Medication-Assisted Recovery.” June 2010.

17 The White House. (2013). “Now is the Time: The President’s plan to protect our children and our communities by reducing gun violence.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/wh_now_is_the_time_full.pdf

18 See for example: The White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy. (2010) National Drug Control Strategy, Data Supplement 20010. Office of National Drug Control Policy, Washington, DC. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/policy-and-research/10datasupplement.pdf.

19 The White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy. “In-Custody Treatment and Offender Reentry” https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/in-custody-treatment-and-reentry

20 The White House. Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Veterans Treatment Court.” Fact sheet. December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/Fact_Sheets/veterans_treatment_courts_fact_sheet_12-13-10.pdf

21 The White House. Office of National Drug Control Policy. (2014). “Consequences of Illicit Drug Use in America.” April 2014. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/Fact_Sheets/consequences_of_illicit_drug_use_-_fact_sheet_april_2014.pdf

22 The Council of State Governments Justice Center, Federal Interagency Council on Reentry. “NRRC Facts & Trends.” http://csgjusticecenter.org/nrrc/facts-and-trends/

23 See, for example: U.S. Department of Justice. (2010). FY 2010 Performance and Accountability Report http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2010/11/30/p67-88.pdf

24 See, for example: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Audit Division. (2012). Office of Justice Programs Annual Financial Statements Fiscal Year 2011: Audit Report 12-18. http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2012/a1218.pdf

25 Bureau of Justice Assistance and International Association of Chiefs of Police. (2014). Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents: A Model Policy. http://www.bja.gov/Publications/IACP-SafeguardingChildren.pdf.

26 National Association of Counties. (2008). Reentry for Safer Communities. Effective County Practices in Jail to Community Transition Planning for Offenders with Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorders. http://ojp.gov/newsroom/testimony/2009/reentrysafecommunity.pdf

27 U.S. Department of Civil Rights. (2012). Investigation of the Topeka Correctional Facility, Findings. http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/topeka_findings_9-6-12.pdf

28U.S. Department of Civil Rights. (2014). Investigation of the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women and Notice of Expanded Investigation. http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/tutwiler_findings_1-17-14.pdf.

29 U.S. Department of Civil Rights. (2009). Mobile County Metro Jail, Findings. http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/MCMJ_findlet_01-15-09.pdf

30 Osher, Fred, D’Amore, D., Plotkin, M., Jarrett, N., & Eggleston, A. (2012). Adults with Behavioral Health Needs Under Correctional Supervision: A Shared Framework for Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Recovery. http://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/9-24-12_Behavioral-Health-Framework-final.pdf

31 Prins, S. & Draper, L. (2012). Improving Outcomes for People with Mental Illness under Community Corrections Supervision: A Guide to Research-Informed Policy and Practice. https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.nicic.gov/Library/023634.pdf

32 Steiner, B. & Meade, B. (2013). “Assessing the Relationship between Exposure to Violence and Inmate Maladjustment within and Across State Correctional Facilities.” Award Number 2011-IJ-CX-0003.

33 Jarjoura, G., DuBois, D., Shlafer, R., and Haight, K. (2013). Mentoring Children of Incarcerated Parents. A Synthesis of Research and Input from the Listening Session Held by the ODJJDP and the White House Domestic Policy Council and Office of Public Engagement. http://www.ojjdp.gov/about/MentoringCOIP2013.pdf

34 Wiseman, J. (2014). Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Offending. Sex Offender Management Assessment and Planning Initiative. NCJ 247059. Office of Justice Programs, Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking: Washington, DC.

35 Chapman, C., Laird, J., KewalRamani, A. (2010). Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972-2008. National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC. And Chapman, C., Laird, J., Ifill, N., and KewalRamani, A. (2011). Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2009. U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics

36 Herman-Stahl, M., Kan, M., & McKay, T. (2008). Incarceration and the Family: A Review of Research and Promising Approaches for Serving Fathers and Families. http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/08/mfs-ip/incarceration&family/ch2.shtml

37 Hager, J. (n.d.). VA’s Duty to Assist Incarcerated Veterans. http://www.bva.va.gov/docs/VLR_VOL1/vlr1hager.pdf

38 Veterans Administration. (2011). PTSD and the Law: An Update. PTSD Research Quarterly, 22(1). http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/newsletters/research-quarterly/v22n1.pdf

39 Government Accountability Office. (2008). Young Adults with Serious Mental Illness. Some States and Federal Agencies are Taking Steps to Address their Transition Challenges. GAO: Washington, DC. http://www.gao.gov/assets/280/277167.pdf.

40 Government Accountability Office. (2011). Child Welfare. More Information and Collaboration Could Promote Ties Between Foster Care Children and their Incarcerated Parents. GAO: Washington, DC. http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/585386.pdf

41 Pollack, H., Reuter, P., & Sevigny, E. (2011). If Drug Treatment Works So Well, Why Are So Many Drug Users in Prison? NBER Working Paper 16731. National Bureau of Economic Research: Cambridge, MA.

42 Pendergast, M. (2009). Interventions to Promote Successful Re-Entry Among Drug-Abusing Parolees. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 5(1): 4-15. http://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/ascp-5-1_508.pdf

43Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2014). “SAMHSA’S Efforts on Criminal and Juvenile Justice Issues.” http://www.samhsa.gov/criminal-juvenile-justice/samhsas-efforts

44 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2010). Mental Health, United States, 2008. Rockville, MD: Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

45Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2013). Behavioral Health, United States, 2012. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

46 McPhee, S. (2008). Persons with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System – The Challenge and Colorado’s Response. Number 08-02. The Legislative Council: Denver, Co. http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1251619440001&ssbinary=true

47 New Jersey Interbranch Advisory Committee on Mental Health Initiatives: Improving Responses to Individuals with Mental Illness in New Jersey. http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/reports2013/mentalillness.pdf

48 Center for Health and Justice. (2009). Facts on Youth. http://www.centerforhealthandjustice.org/FOY%208-09.pdf

49 Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. (n.d.). Incarceration and Public Health: Fact Sheet. http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/Incarceration%20and%20Public%20Health%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

50 Common Sense for Drug Policy.(n.d.). Drug War Facts: People Sentenced for Drug Offenses in the US Correctional System. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Drugs#sthash.GzElo5m8.dpbs

51 Correctional Association of New York. (2009). Women in Prison Fact Sheet. http://www.correctionalassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Wome_in_Prison_Fact_Sheet_2009_FINAL.pdf

52 Nickel, J., Garland, C. & Kane, L. (2009). Children of Incarcerated Parents: An Action Plan for Federal

Policymakers. New York: Council of State Governments Justice Center.

53 Webster, D. and Vernick, J. (Eds) (2013). Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy and Evidence and Analysis. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

54 Gambill, G. (2011). “Is Data Doing Justice to our Veterans?” http://www.justicepolicy.org/news/2861

55 Justice Research and Statistics Association. (n.d.). Conference Presentation Archives, 2000-2010. http://www.jrsa.org/events/conference/presentations-archive.html.

56 National Alliance on Mental Illness. (n.d.). CIT Toolkit Criminalization Facts. https://www2.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=CIT&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=57465

57 National Alliance on Mental Illness, Virginia. (n.d.). Fact Sheet: Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System http://www2.nami.org/Content/Microsites184/NAMI_Virginia/Home172/Advocacy_Main_Page/Fact_Sheets3/MIandCriminalJusticeSystem.pdf

58 Statement of Michael Fitzpatrick. (2006). Department of Justice Study: Mental Illness of Prison Inmates Worse Than Past Estimates, Reflects Failures in Mental Healthcare System. http://www2.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Top_Story&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=38174

59 Christian, S. (2009). Children of Incarcerated Parents. http://www.ncsl.org/documents/cyf/childrenofincarceratedparents.pdf.

60 National Council on Disability. (2011). National Disability Policy: A Progress Report. Accessed from http://www.ncd.gov/progress_reports/Oct312011

61 Travis, J., Western, B., & Redburn, S. (Eds)(2014). The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

62 The Sentencing Project. (2007). Women in the Criminal Justice System. Accessed from http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/womenincj_total.pdf.

63 See, as examples: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t600012004.pdf and http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t600072004.pdf

64 The Texas Civil Rights Project. (n.d.). TCRP Justice for Vets Campaign. http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/programs-and-services/veterans/.

65 See, Wildeman, C. (2009). “Parental Imprisonment, the Prison Boom, and the Concentration of Childhood Disadvantage.” Demography, 46(2): 265–280. Benning, C. & Lahm, Karen. (2014). “Effects of Parent-Child Relationships on Inmate Behavior: A Comparison of Male and Female Inmates.” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 1-19.

66 See, Raphael, S. & Stoll, M. (2013). Why are so Many Americans in Prison? New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Wildeman, C., Hacker, J., & Weaver, V. (Eds.) (2014). The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: Detaining Democracy? Criminal Justice and American Civic Life. California: SAGE Publications. Petti, B. & Sykes, B. (2008). “The Demographic Implications of the Prison Boom: Evidence of a ‘Third Demographic Transition’?” , University of Washington, Working Paper. Western, B., Pattillo, M., & Weiman, D (2006). “Introduction.” In M. Pattillo, D. Weiman, and B. Western (Ed.), Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration. (pp.1-18). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

67 Pettit, B & Western, B. (2004). “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration.” American Sociological Review, 69: 151-169.

68 Bushway, S., Stoll, M., & Weiman D (Ed.) (2007). Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

69 See, Wilper, A., Woolhandler, S., Boyd, J., Lasser, K., McCormick, D., Bor, D., & Himmelstein, D. (2009). “The Health and Health Care of US Prisoners: Results of a Nationwide Survey.” American Journal of Public Health, 99(4): 666-672.; Rosen, D., Hammond, W., Wohl, D., & Golin, C. (2012). “Disease Prevalence and Use of Health Care among a National Sample of Black and White Male State Prisoners.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 23(1): 254-272. Williams, B., McGuire, J., Lindsay, R., Baillargeon, J., Cenzer, I., Lee, S., & Kushel, M. (2010). “Coming Home: Health Status and Homelessness Risk of Older Pre-release Prisoners.” Journal of General Internal Medicine, 25(10): 1038-1044. Brockmann, B. & Rich, J. (2012). “Incarceration & Community Health.” Communities & Banking, 27-29.

70 Durmont, D., Gjelsvik, A., Chen, N., & Rich, J. (2013). “Hispanics, Incarceration, and TB/HIV Screening: A Missed Opportunity for Prevention.” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 15(4). Sykes, B. & Piquero, A. (2009). “Structuring and Recreating Inequality: Health Testing Policies, Race, and the Criminal Justice System.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 623: 214-227.

71 Zarkin, G., Cowell, A., Hicks, K., Mills, M., Belenko, S., Dunlap, L., Houser, K., & Keyes, V. (2012). “Benefits and Costs of Substance Abuse Treatment Programs for State Prison Inmates: Results from a Lifetime Simulation Model.” Health Economics, 12(6): 633-653.

72 Gonzalez, J. & Connell, N. (2014). “Mental Health of Prisoners: Identifying Barriers to Mental Health Treatment and Medication Continuity”. American Journal of Public Health, 104(12): 2328-2333.

73 Greenberg, G. & Rosenheck, R. (2008). “Homelessness in the State and Federal Prison Population.” Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 18(2): 88-103.

74 See, Phelps, M. (2012). “The Place of Punishment: Variation in the Provision of Inmate Services Staff across the Punitive Turn.” Journal of Criminal Justice, 40(5): 348-357. Celinska, K. & Sung, H. (2014). “Gender Differences in the Determinants of Prison Rule Violations.” The Prison Journal, (94)2: 220-241.

75 Sung, H. (2010). Prevalence and risk factors of violence-related and accident-related injuries among state prisoners. Journal of Correctional Health Care, 16(3), 178-187.

76 Kruttschnitt, C. (2010). The Paradox of Women’s Imprisonment. Daedalus, 139(3), 32-42.

77 See, Houle, B. (2011). “Obesity Disparities among Disadvantaged Men: National Adult Male Inmate Prevalence Pooled with Non-incarcerated Estimates, United States, 2002-2004.” Social Science Medicine, 72(10): 1667-1673. Binswanger, I., Krueger, P., & Steiner, J. (2009) “Prevalence of Chronic Medical Conditions among Jail and Prison Inmates in the USA Compared with the General Population.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 63(11): 912-919.

78 Binswanger, I., Carson, E.A., Krueger, P., Mueller, S., Steiner, J., & Sabol, W. (2014). “Prison Tobacco Control Policies and Deaths from Smoking in United States Prisons: Populations Based Retrospective Analysis.” BMJ, 5(349).

79 Goldman, D., Fastenau, J., Dirani, R., Helland, E., Joyce, G., Conrad, R., & Lakdawalla, D. (2014). “Medicaid Prior Authorization Policies and Imprisonment among Patients with Schizophrenia.” American Journal of Managed Care, 20(7): 577-586.

80 Tahamount, S. (2013). Essays on the Effects of Correctional Policies on Prison Misconduct. Thesis for the University of California, Berkley.

81 Tietjan, G. (2009). Predictors of Educational Program Usage within United States Prisons. Sociology Theses, Dissertations, & Student Research. Paper 16. Thesis for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

82 Castro, M. (2014). “Diabetes Screening in Inmates: A Quality Improvement Pilot Project.” Dissertation for the University of Connecticut.

83 Ainsworth, S. & Taxman, F. (2013) “Creating Simulation Parameters with Existing Sources.” In Taxman, Faye & Pattavina, A. (Eds.) Simulation Strategies to Reduce Recidivism. Risk Need Responsivity (RNR) Modeling for the Criminal Justice System. Pp: 115-142 New York: Springer.

84 Stohr, M. & Walsh, A. (2012). Corrections: The Essentials. California: Sage Publications

85 Brown, C. & Stoffel, V. (Eds.) (2011). Occupational Therapy in Mental Health: A Vision for Participation. Pennsylvania: F.A. Davis Company.

86 Scwhartzapfel, B. (n.d.). Modern-day Slavery in America’s Prison Workforce. American Prospect. Accessed from http://prospect.org/article/great-american-chain-gang

87 Reckdahl, K. “Who is the Biggest Victim of America’s Prison Book?” The Hechinger Report. December 18, 2014. Accessed from http://hechingerreport.org/biggest-victim-americas-prison-boom/

88 Reckdahl, K. “Mass Incarceration’s Collateral Damage: The Children Left Behind.” The Nation. January 5, 2015. Accessed from http://www.thenation.com/article/193121/mass-incarcerations-collateral-damage-children-left-behind

89 Kessler, G. “The Stale Claim that 40 Percent of Gun Sales Lack Background Checks.” January 21, 2013. The Washington Post. Accessed from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-stale-claim-that-40-percent-of-gun-sales-lack-background-checks/2013/01/20/e42ec050-629a-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_blog.html

90 Karras, T. “How Two Grandparents Embraced Later-Life Parenthood. Womans Day. October 13, 2014. Accessed from http://www.womansday.com/relationships/family-friends/a8004/grandparents-raising-grandchildren/

91 Once the identifiers have been stripped from RTI’s file and RTI’s copies of the identifiers are destroyed, the remaining survey data with no identifying information will be moved to RTI’s standard secure computer system which is password protected and protected by access privileges which are assigned by the appropriate system administrator.

92 Similar samples of adults are interviewed in 24 other participating countries.

93 The sample of 416 facilities does not include a reserve sample of 50 facilities because part or all of the reserve sample will be released only if the number of participating facilities drops below the desired level. (See Part B, Section 1 Universe and Respondent Selection for more information about the reserve sample.) If part or all of the reserve sample is released though, additional burden is not expected as the reserve sample will replace jurisdictions/facilities that already refused the survey request.

37