CAREER: Advancing knowledge on the U.S. Justice System through CJARS

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

The social and economic cost of crime in the U.S. is very high. Individuals, families, and neighborhoods pay these costs in different ways, through the direct cost of crime and indirect costs imposed on families and neighborhoods. This CAREER award funds several distinct projects that provide better data-based measures of specific impacts of crime and involvement with the criminal justice system. The projects all use newly available data from the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS), a nationally integrated data repository that combines criminal justice data from 42 states and the federal government over a long time span. The research provides new insights into how increasing crime rates affect family stability and the health and welfare of children. It also considers how the number and rates of criminal conviction have changed over time and across locations. The project also considers how increased crime increases the costs of government programs in unexpected ways. This award funds research that leverages recently linked criminal justice data from CJARS to study how involvement in the justice system shapes the lives of individuals, families, and their communities in the U.S. The research seeks to answer the following questions: (i) how has the risk of CJS (criminal justice system) involvement changed over recent decades and by local geography? (ii) does CJS involvement impact household instability for minor children? (iii) what are the effects of the rise in mass incarceration for retirement in the coming decades? (iv) does CJS involvement affect returns on investment for small business loans for entrepreneurs? and (v) how accurate is demographic data collected for operational purposes by criminal justice agencies and what are the implications of poor data quality? A common theme in the research is the integration of national administrative and survey data paired with natural experiments to exploit exogenous policy variation. The project will also develop training workshops to expand the number of researchers and policy makers using CJARS to study the causes and consequences of crime and the justice system in the U.S. The results of this research will provide a better understanding of how the criminal justice system affects the lives of ordinary people. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.