Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2015, $120,000)
The American Statistical Association (ASA) Committee's Law and Justice Statistics was established to serve as liaison between the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the legal, judicial, criminal justice, and academic communities. Its goals are to develop new insights to affect current crime and justice research practices; improve the quality of crime and justice statistics, records, and information systems; and report on relevant issues to guarantee the integrity of statistical programs maintained by BJS and other appropriate organizations such as the Justice Research and Statistics Association.
The Committee achieves these goals through a variety of activities. Committee members attend national conferences and meetings to keep abreast of new issues in and promote new ideas to the justice research and statistics community. The Committee oversees research on topics relevant to BJS operations by competitively awarding grants to graduate students, working with the graduate students, reviewing the research, and writing reports that include a summary of the research, opinions, and final recommendations to BJS. The Committee also provides technical evaluation with regard to statistical practices and policies at BJS and other appropriate organizations.
Under this award, the ASA Committee will provide advice and technical guidance in connection with the work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics; provide technical advice, criticism, and evaluation with regard to procedures used by state and Federal statistical agencies with the aim of helping these agencies establish high professional standards related to statistics; consider and report on relevant issues to ensure the integrity of statistical programs maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice and other appropriate agencies and organizations; promote the development of quality statistical activities in civil and criminal justice settings; encourage effective statistical training for lawyers, judges, and judicial administrators through national and regional meetings, workshops, and short courses carried out in conjunction with government agencies and other professional organizations; promote research interest and activity by ASA members in important technical problems arising in legal and justice statistics settings; working with other ASA committees in coordinating activities at the interface of statistics and the law.
Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.
CA/NCF