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OJJDP announced the upcoming public release of more than a decade of data from the agency's sponsored juvenile corrections data collections at this year's American Society of Criminology (ASC) annual conference. The conference was held in St. Louis, MO, from November 12 to November 15.

The data—available for the first time to the general research community—will provide critical information to State and national researchers who are investigating and seeking answers to major policy and practice questions in juvenile justice, and disseminating those findings to the field.

The data collection files to be released include the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP) (1997–2006) and the Juvenile Residential Facility Census (JRFC) (2000–2004). The CJRP provides detailed information on all juveniles in residential facilities in the United States, including gender, date of birth, race, most serious offense charged, court adjudication date, admission date, and security status. JRFC collects information on how facilities operate and the services they provide, including detailed information on facility security, crowding, injuries and deaths in custody, facility ownership, operation, and services.

OJJDP has been working closely with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) to prepare the files for release, and to ensure safeguards are in place that comply with confidentiality protections related to these collections.

As part of this effort, OJJDP has also been working with NACJD to ensure that earlier files from OJJDP's Children in Custody census (1974–95) also will be available to the public, and that documentation for all of these files is complete.

To highlight the utility of these data files, OJJDP and NACJD led a panel presentation at the ASC annual conference. The panel included a historical overview of the data collections and the steps taken to prepare the files for public dissemination. Presenters from the National Center for Juvenile Justice and George Mason University provided examples of how researchers can use the data in these files to answer key policy questions in the field of juvenile justice. NACJD staff discussed procedures established to ensure that confidentiality protections are maintained as researchers use these data.

For more information on NACJD, please visit the Web site. Information on the ASC annual conference is available at the ASC Web site.