FAQ Listing

In 2022, 18 inmates were executed in the United States. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) Capital Punishment reports present characteristics of persons under sentence of death and persons executed, and summarize the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status. See Prisoners executed under civil authority in the United States, by year, region, and jurisdiction for additional data on executions.

FOR STATE AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS: Section 103 of the Act, regarding implementation assistance to the states, says that the grants "shall be used by the States and Indian tribal governments, in conjunction with units of local government and State and local courts, to establish or upgrade information and identification technologies for firearms eligibility determinations." 

The law says that grants to states or American Indian tribes may only be used to—

• create electronic systems, which provide accurate and up-to-date information that is directly related to checks under the NICS, including court disposition and corrections records
• assist states in establishing or enhancing their own capacities to perform NICS background checks
• supply accurate and timely information to the Attorney General concerning final dispositions of criminal records to databases accessed by NICS
• supply accurate and timely information to the Attorney General concerning the identity of persons who have a federally prohibiting mental health adjudication or commitment
• supply accurate and timely court orders and records of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence for inclusion in federal and state law enforcement databases used to conduct NICS background checks
• collect and analyze data needed to demonstrate levels of state compliance with the Act
• maintain the relief from disabilities program in accordance with Section 105, but not less than 3% and no more than 10% of each grant shall be used for this purpose.

FOR STATE COURT SYSTEMS: Section 301 of the Act, regarding grants to state court systems for the improvement of automation and transmittal of disposition records, says that grants be made to each state, consistent with state plans for the integration, automation, and accessibility of criminal history records, for use by the state court system to improve automation and transmittal to federal and state repositories of—

• criminal history dispositions
• records relevant to determining whether a person has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence or a prohibiting domestic violence protection order
• prohibiting mental adjudications and commitments.

The law says that the amounts granted will be used by the state court system only to—

"carry out, as necessary, assessments of the capabilities of state courts to automate and transmit arrest and conviction records, court orders, and mental health adjudications or commitments to federal and state record repositories; and
implement policies, systems, and procedures to automate and transmit arrest and" conviction records, court orders, and mental health adjudications or commitments to federal and state record repositories.
 

In addition to felony criminal matters, prosecutors’ offices handled a variety of other case types. A greater number of prosecutors’ offices reported computer-based offenses and taking on homeland security responsibilities. In 2005, 60% of all state court prosecutors reported prosecuting crimes under the state’s computer crime statute, compared to 42% in 2001. About 80% of all offices reported handling credit card fraud, bankcard fraud (71%), identity theft (70%), and transmitting child pornography in 2005.

Full-time prosecutors’ offices were more likely to report prosecuting cases related to terrorism or participating in terrorism related investigations, compared to small full-time offices or part-time offices. In 2005, 2% of all prosecutor offices reported prosecuting cases related to terrorism; 7% actively participated in terrorism related investigations; and a third had members of the staff attend training on homeland security issues. Nearly a quarter of all offices participated in state or local task forces for homeland security.

The Identity Theft Supplement (ITS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) captures person-level information on identity theft against persons age 16 or older.

BJS has several reports that present statistics on race and crime. The Race/Ethnicity page contains more information on how race and ethnicity are measured and a listing of our most recent reports on this topic.

The Data Collections section of the BJS website provides information about and links to the different surveys developed and used by BJS. To locate those that specifically focus on corrections, see the Data Collections - Corrections section of the BJS site.

The NCJRS Virtual Library/Abstracts Database is not compatible with the program EndNote.

Many of the publications from NCJRS sponsor agencies and those housed in the NCJRS Virtual Library Abstracts Database collection are available at local libraries. NCJRS provides the "Find in a Library" service for you to search these collections. At times, it may be faster, cheaper, and/or more convenient to access documents found within the NCJRS Virtual Library at a local library.

From an abstract detail page, when you click on the Find in a Library link, NCJRS will send a formatted search to WorldCat, a consortium of over 10,000 libraries worldwide. On the WorldCat site, you can discover if the document you are interested in is available in a local library.

To learn more, view the Obtain Materials section of the Virtual Library Tutorial.

Yes, there are fees for interlibrary loans (ILL). ILLs within the United States have a fee of $15.00 per item while loans to Canada have a fee of $16.50 (USD) per item loaned. ILLs are only available to patrons in the United States and Canada. See the Interlibrary Loan section of our site for additional information about this service and how to request an ILL.

Resources may be borrowed from the NCJRS Library via interlibrary loan for a period of 6 weeks. An additional 6-week extension is available by request. See the Interlibrary Loan section of our site for additional information about this service.