2022
The purpose of this report is to convey the findings of a series of exercises that were conducted to benchmark the CJARS data infrastructure against other widely-used sources of data on justice-involved populations (i.e., Uniform Crime Report, State Court Processing Statistics, National Prisoners Statistics Program, National Corrections Reporting Program, Annual Probation Survey, and Annual Parole Survey). This involved comparing counts of events and caseload characteristics reported in these data series to similar estimates produced using CJARS. Results indicated that there was a high degree of alignment between the counts of events and caseload characteristics that were estimated using CJARS as compared to the data series that were used for benchmarking. The findings reviewed in this report provide a substantial amount of evidence in support of the efficacy of the CJARS data infrastructure.
2021
The purpose of this report is to convey the findings of a series of exercises that were conducted to benchmark the CJARS data infrastructure against other widely-used sources of data on justice-involved populations (i.e., Uniform Crime Report, State Court Processing Statistics, National Prisoners Statistics Program, National Corrections Reporting Program, Annual Probation Survey, and Annual Parole Survey). This involved comparing counts of events and caseload characteristics reported in these data series to similar estimates produced using CJARS. Results indicated that there was a high degree of alignment between the counts of events and caseload characteristics that were estimated using CJARS as compared to the data series that were used for benchmarking. The findings reviewed in this report provide a substantial amount of evidence in support of the efficacy of the CJARS data infrastructure.
Modernizing Person-Level Entity Resolution with Biometrically Linked Records
In this paper, we propose a novel approach to person-level record linkage in administrative data, a procedure and setting that is increasingly at the frontier of economic research. We build a supervised learning algorithm trained on fingerprint identifiers that act as an unbiased measure of true match status. Both the size and nature of the training data yield performance that substantially improves on existing literature, especially for women and minorities. We demonstrate model effectiveness in deduplication and record linkage applications, and extendibility to dissimilar populations from the training data. Simulation exercises illustrate how matching performance impacts internal and external validity, and statistical precision.
2020
Criminal Disqualifications in the Paycheck Protection Program
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to support small businesses. However, some businesses are not eligible for this program if an owner of 20% or more of the equity of the business has had certain disqualifying events based on their history of involvement in the justice system. The goal of this report was to estimate the overall impact of these criminal history disqualifications. The report was also released as Census Bureau ADEP Working Paper ADEP-WP-2020-04.
The purpose of this report is to convey the findings of a series of exercises that were conducted to benchmark the CJARS data infrastructure against other widely-used sources of data on justice-involved populations (i.e., Uniform Crime Report, State Court Processing Statistics, National Prisoners Statistics Program, National Corrections Reporting Program, Annual Probation Survey, and Annual Parole Survey). This involved comparing counts of events and caseload characteristics reported in these data series to similar estimates produced using CJARS. Results indicated that there was a high degree of alignment between the counts of events and caseload characteristics that were estimated using CJARS as compared to the data series that were used for benchmarking. The findings reviewed in this report provide a substantial amount of evidence in support of the efficacy of the CJARS data infrastructure.
2019
Trends in Michigan Marijuana Offenses
In collaboration with the Michigan State Court Administrative Office, CJARS produced a brief report examining court case filing trends for marijuana-related offenses in the state.