Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Corrections Resources maintains over 30 corrections-related data collections. Most are annual collections of administrative data from correctional administrators, ranging from basic population counts and offender demographic characteristics to facility capacity, programs, staff, and resources. In addition to collecting administrative data, BJS maintains a number of recurring national surveys of prison and jail inmates. The National Prison Statistics (NPS) Program also collects counts on specific inmate populations from the Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. territories.
Auditor Compliance Tool - Prisons and Jails is one of the core components of the PREA audit instrument. It is used during each phase of the PREA audit to guide auditors in making compliance determinations for each provision of every standard, including the evidence auditors should collect to assess compliance. The Auditor Compliance Tool walks the auditor step by step through each provision of every Standard, pairing the provision itself with the detailed requirements for compliance and noting how the auditor should verify that the facility meets or does not meet those requirements.
The Body-worn Camera Partnership Program is for law enforcement agencies, including tribal law enforcement, seeking to pilot, establish, or enhance body-worn camera policy and implementation practices. BJA’s Body-worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program (BWCPIP) addresses how to develop and implement these policies and practices for effective program adoption, including the purchase, deployment, and maintenance of camera systems and equipment; data storage and access; and privacy considerations.
The Community Supervision Resource Center will help community supervision agencies advance along the continuum of best and emerging practices. This center will serve as a hub for the field and a vehicle to administer intensive technical assistance and microgrants as needed by the field.
The Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program (COSSUP) aims to reduce the impact of opioids, stimulants, and other substances on individuals and communities by supporting comprehensive, collaborative initiatives. COSSUP funding provides necessary resources that allow communities to respond to illicit substance use and misuse to reduce overdose deaths, promote public safety, and support access to treatment and recovery services in the criminal justice system. COSSUP supports units of state, local, and tribal governments to plan, develop, and implement comprehensive efforts that identify, respond to, treat, and support those impacted by illicit opioids, stimulants, and other drugs.
Correctional Officer Wellness Project presents: Building a Comprehensive Mental Health Program. As the criminal justice reform movement is taking shape with bipartisan efforts to effect change, lasting systemic reform can only occur through approaches that address the mental health crisis facing correctional officers today. Comprehensive mental health programs need to address a number of unique challenges facing correctional officers, including privacy concerns, whole-family impacts, and need for sustained mental health care through retirement. Above all, programs must include the flexibility to adapt to new information as more surveys and studies are conducted to determine what’s working and what isn’t—and as more correctional officers come forward seeking help.
Before beginning the long—overdue work of reforming the U.S. correctional system and addressing the mental health challenges facing correctional officers (COs) today, it’s imperative to understand the sources of those mental health challenges–namely, the stress COs live with every day. Correctional Officer Wellness Project addresses the Causes of Stress in this infographic.
Correctional Officer Wellness Project offers insight into the Challenges With Facility Administration. Surprisingly, the biggest source of stress for correctional officers (COs) today isn’t the incarcerated individuals they work with—it’s the administrations they work for. National studies have shown that approximately 60% of staff stress comes from policies, procedures, and the administrators themselves.
The U.S. correctional system is at a breaking point. Every American touched by the system—officers, administrators, the currently incarcerated and their family members—experiences challenges that can, and do, negatively impact their mental health. Among America’s nearly 450,000 correctional officers (COs), PTSD and depression are at near-epidemic proportions, driving extreme rates of psychological and even physical harm. The Correctional Officer Wellness Project presents an infographic focusing on Mental Health.
The crisis of correctional officer (CO) mental health is reaching a breaking point. Correctional Officer Wellness Project: Solutions offers approaches that can help address these challenges. Administrators need to do more than just make these solutions available—they need to work to create a culture where mental health care is encouraged and valued. Long-term, lasting reform cannot be achieved through tactical shifts alone, but requires psychological, cultural, and strategic change as well.
Correctional Officers’ Perceptions of Training and Organizational Values provides facts from a national scan conducted by Improving Institutional Corrections Academy Training, TMG consisting of on-site observations, surveys, and curriculum evaluations. TMG examines training academies' focus, content, and quality and develop guidance for building and supporting correctional staff to increase public safety by improving outcomes across the corrections community.
The Corrections Analyst Community Forum is a place for corrections analysts to ask questions and get advice from the corrections analyst community.
The CDC’s food safety webpage focused on correctional health offers guidance on handling food safely within correctional facilities to prevent foodborne illnesses. It outlines the unique challenges faced in these environments, such as the high turnover of staff and inmates, and emphasizes the importance of adhering to safe food handling practices, including proper preparation, storage, and serving of food. The page provides resources and recommendations for training correctional staff on food safety, along with strategies for ensuring safe meals in detention and incarceration settings. Overall, the webpage aims to enhance food safety standards in correctional facilities to protect the health of inmates and staff alike.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance Crime Analyst in Residence (CAR) Program is designed to help law enforcement agencies expand their use of data analysis and analytics to manage their operations and practices. Using a hybrid approach of onsite and virtual technical assistance, the CAR training and technical assistance (TTA) team helps law enforcement agencies integrate tailored crime and data analysis practices, products, tools, and information more fully into their daily operations and crime reduction efforts.
Developing and Implementing a PREA-Compliant Staffing Plan introduces correctional practitioners to a new resource for developing a PREA-compliant staffing plan. This webinar will introduce key concepts from the published white paper entitled Developing and Implementing PREA-Compliant Staffing Plan: A Resource for the Field that addresses a range of considerations when developing a staffing plan in both adult and juvenile correctional settings.
FTP Resources for Auditors offers a compilation of auditor resources used by the Field Training Program (FTP). The resources were developed by the FTP team to aid in obtaining and collecting audit documentation and comprehensive facility data.
The Guide for Hiring Corrections Analysts offers leaders in corrections guidance on building teams that can provide data and analytics support to their agencies. The tool also provides tiers of basic skills, knowledge, and experiences that corrections analysts should possess at different levels.
Improving Institutional Corrections Training Academies: Guiding Principles Agency Assessment evaluates each agency's adherence to the guiding principles.
Training is an integral component of every correctional agency, influenced by factors such as agency mission, organizational priorities, and budget considerations. Improving Institutional Corrections Training Academies: Guiding Principles is intended to provide a tool to organize priorities for a contemporary correctional training academy and a framework for best practices in the field to ensure staff receive the highest caliber training available.
The Collaborative Crisis Response Training Program funds the implementation of transdisciplinary crisis response training to educate, train, and prepare law enforcement and corrections officers so that they are equipped to appropriately interact with people who have behavioral health conditions (including mental health and substance use) and intellectual and developmental disabilities while completing their job responsibilities. The program supports states and local law enforcement, and correctional entities to plan and implement training, engage in organizational planning to deploy trained officers in times of crisis, and sustain a best practice crisis response program.
The Integrating Adult Learning Theory Practices in Correctional Training course reviews the tenets of Adult Learning Theory and the value of applying these principles to the development of all training curriculum. There is a clear connection between effective training and the enhancement of safety and security practices through employee readiness, satisfaction, and retention.
The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) supports innovative cross-system collaboration for individuals with mental illnesses or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who come into contact with the justice system. BJA is seeking applications that demonstrate a collaborative project between criminal justice and mental health partners from eligible applicants to plan, implement, or expand a justice and mental health collaboration program.
Justice Counts envisions a more effective and efficient criminal justice system by providing policymakers with actionable data to make policy and budgetary decisions. Justice Counts helps agency leaders adopt the Justice Counts metrics, make the data available, and help policy makers use them. It has supported a broad coalition to reach consensus around a set of metrics for each part of the system, including state departments of correction. States will develop a plan to engage agencies and localities, organize their data in the Justice Counts tool, and engage decisionmakers to use the data.
This Justice Reinvestment Initiative State-level Technical Assistance uses a data-driven process to help states improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their criminal justice systems. The initiative works in partnership with states to address public safety challenges, including people who have mental illnesses in the justice system, high rates of recidivism, and the high cost of corrections, all while trying to improve services for victims and increase opportunities for people returning to communities from prison. BJA provides training and technical assistance experts to collect agency-spanning data that spotlight the most pressing trends and drivers of crime and recidivism.
Descriptive Study of Michigan Department of Corrections Staff Well-being: Contributing Factors, Outcomes, and Actionable Solutions details findings on correctional employees’ well-being. The purpose of the study is to improve Michigan Department of Corrections’ ability to support employee well-being. Correctional employees’ wellness is pivotal to the fulfillment of correctional agencies’ mission as it is inextricably linked to the safety and quality of operations and to the effective delivery of services in correctional facilities and in the community.
Correctional Employee Health and Wellness states that correctional administrators and other stakeholders exhibit heightened concerns regarding relationships between occupational stressors and employees’ health, performance, and work engagement. Resolutions for this concern were articulated in a 2017 resolution of the American Correctional Association that states that the adverse impact of the job on correctional employees’ wellness is a critical issue that has reached crisis proportions because the occupational risks inherent to the profession increase the health risks for correctional employees. The resolution also posits that the nature of the correctional environment can be a causative factor in the development of high-risk behaviors, such as alcohol abuse. The resolution further adds that traumatic events in the correctional workplace may result in employees succumbing to health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The National Guidelines for Post-conviction Risk and Needs Assessment is designed to help criminal justice agencies ensure that their implementation of post-conviction risk and needs assessment promotes accuracy, fairness, transparency, and effective communication and use.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance National Training and Technical Assistance Center (BJA NTTAC) facilitates the delivery of training and technical assistance (TTA) to the criminal justice community. By providing rapid, expert, coordinated, and data-driven TTA, the BJA NTTAC team supports practitioners in their efforts to reduce crime, recidivism, and unnecessary confinement, making communities safer. Utilizing a vast provider network, the BJA NTTAC team connects state, local, and tribal justice agencies with subject-matter experts to address their communities’ specific public safety needs.
OAS Updates and Q&A Session was an opportunity to ask any and all questions related to the PREA Online Audit System.
The Correctional Healthcare RFP Toolkit is designed to assist correctional and detention facilities, along with local governments, in creating effective, outcome-oriented requests for proposals (RFPs) for healthcare services. It provides a step-by-step guide, covering everything from preparing to draft an RFP, using a provided template, issuing the RFP, evaluating vendor responses, to negotiating contracts. The Toolkit emphasizes collaboration among agency leaders, procurement officials, and other stakeholders involved in the vendor contracting process.
The purpose of the Patrick Leahy Bulletproof Vest Partnership (BVP) Program is to reimburse states, counties, federally recognized tribes, cities, and local jurisdictions up to 50% of the cost of body armor vests purchased for law enforcement officers.
The PREA Brochure: Template is intended for essential inmate/resident education on PREA, including definitions of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and how to make a report. The brochure was created to allow facilities to modify it to make it facility-specific. Instructions for how to modify the template and how to print for best results are included.
PREA Poster Templates are intended to provide information on an individual’s right to report, how to report, and access to victim support services. The posters were created in a range of sizes and designed to allow facilities to modify them to make them facility-specific. Instructions for how to modify the template and how to print for best results are included.
Under the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP), the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) certifies that local or state prison industry programs meet all the necessary requirements to be exempt from federal restrictions on prisoner-made goods in interstate commerce. PIECP programs place people who are incarcerated in realistic work environments, pay them prevailing wages, and give them a chance to develop marketable skills that will increase their potential for rehabilitation and meaningful employment on release. BJA provides technical assistance to all active state and county-based certified correctional industry programs that manage business partnerships with private industry.
BJA’s Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Management Office is responsible for supporting PREA implementation nationwide. In addition to administering the PREA Site-based Grant Program, this office also directs the PREA Resource Center, articulates the instrumentation and methodology to be used for PREA audits, trains and certifies PREA auditors, provides oversight for PREA audits, and communicates with governors’ offices about their annual statutory obligations under PREA.
Promoting Positive Behavior in Restrictive Housing explores how the South Dakota State Penitentiary (SDSP) officers and supervisors saw immediate results when corrections officers began monitoring positive behavior amongst its restrictive housing offenders on each shift. Not only were the offenders complying with basic rules, they were more respectful in their communication and engaged in their own progress. SDSP officers designed and implemented a no-cost method to track and reward positive behavior every day, on every shift in the Restrictive Housing Program.
Criminal justice agencies use risk assessments to assist with the allocation of limited resources to manage and rehabilitate people at various stages of the criminal justice system. The Public Safety Risk Assessment Clearinghouse (PSRAC) provides evidence-based information about how to use risk assessments effectively and properly to build safe families and communities.
Improving Institutional Corrections Training Academies: Guiding Principles provides a concise overview of the foundational principles designed to ensure the highest standard of training for all correctional agencies.
South Dakota Department of Corrections (SD DOC) began reforming its restrictive housing policies, procedures, and practices in late 2013. In Restrictive Housing Performance Measures: Real World Application the SD DOC, with technical assistance from the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) funded through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), collected and reported data from the start not only to demonstrate what was being done, how well, and to what end, but also to help inform modifications to the new restrictive housing program as it was rolled out.
Through the Restrictive Housing Reform Initiative, the Bureau of Justice Assistance funds a training and technical assistance provider to: (1) provide support and assistance to correctional agencies that are ready to implement reforms around their use of restrictive housing, (2) create resources based on national implementation efforts that will be made available to correctional agencies and facilities engaged in or considering restrictive housing reform, and (3) develop practices for correctional agencies to use in collecting and analyzing data to measure the impact of these reforms.
Safer Prisons, Safer Communities shares how we are in the midst of a profound crisis in our nation’s correctional system. Prisons across the country are dangerously understaffed, overcrowded, and plagued by rapidly deteriorating conditions. As a result, our prisons are not conducive to rehabilitation and produce increasingly poor outcomes for corrections staff and incarcerated people, as well as our families and communities. One Voice United (OVU) and FAMM, respectively, are two of the leading organizations representing correctional staff and incarcerated people and their families. They have a shared goal of ensuring the health and safety of everyone who works and lives in prison, and they are working together to draw attention to these problems and find solutions to understaffing and overcrowding that will end the national corrections crisis.
The Second Chance Act National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC) was established in 2009 and serves as a primary source of information and guidance in adult and juvenile reentry, advancing the use of evidence-based practices and policies by creating a network of practitioners, researchers, and policymakers invested in reducing recidivism. The NRRC serves as a centralized online location for reentry information for dissemination to the field and includes a mechanism for online technical assistance. It also serves as a clearinghouse for reentry-related learning and funding opportunities, and provides resources for various audiences, including state, local, and tribal governments; service providers; nonprofit organizations; corrections institutions; individuals returning home to their communities from incarceration and their families; and other stakeholders.
The Comprehensive Tribal Justice Systems Strategic Planning Program provides federally recognized tribes and tribal consortia with funding and intensive technical assistance to help them develop a comprehensive and coordinated plan to address public safety and victimization. Through the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) Purpose Area 2, BJA provides funding for tribes to engage in comprehensive justice system strategic planning that will improve tribal justice and safety; develop, support, and enhance adult tribal justice systems to prevent crime related to opioid, alcohol, and other substance abuse; and renovate, expand, and/or replace tribal justice facilities to enhance facility conditions and/or add capacity for recidivism-reduction programming.
The Virtual Academy Model Code Repository gives corrections analysts access to a variety of code templates written in the R statistical programming language to improve data analytic efficiency and accuracy. This repository includes code to help reduce time spent compiling reports, tables, and visualizations. Additionally, all templates encourage reproducibility to prevent data discrepancies and simplify common time-consuming tasks.
Training Directors: A Survey to Develop Guidance on Correctional Training Needs provides facts from a national scan conducted by Improving Institutional Corrections Academy Training consisting of on-site observations, surveys, and curriculum evaluations. TMG examines training academies' focus, content, and quality and develop guidance for building and supporting correctional staff to increase public safety by improving outcomes across the corrections community.
Training Matrix Development Guide for Correctional Training Academies provides a framework for basic correctional training (BCT), along with pre-service and annual/in-service training programs. This guidance was developed after conducting a national scan of state correctional training programs and identifying gaps in curricula. This resource is intended to provide training academy directors, instructors, and staff a guide for building and supporting key skills and knowledge for today’s corrections workforce.
The Tribal Justice Systems Infrastructure Program provides federally recognized tribes and tribal consortia with funding to strengthen tribal justice system capacity by addressing physical infrastructure needs. Through the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) Purpose Area 4, BJA provides site-based funding to federally recognized tribes to renovate or expand existing tribal justice-related facilities or build prefabricated or permanent modular tribal justice-related facilities.