Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed eCollection eComments Requested; Reinstatement, With Change, of a Previously Approved Collection for Which Approval Has Expired; Survey: Survey of Prison Inmates (Formerly Named the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities)

AGENCY:

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Department of Justice.

ACTION:

30-day notice.

SUMMARY:

The Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, will be submitting the following information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. This proposed information collection was previously published in the Federal Register at 80 FR 9749, February 24, 2015, allowing for a 60 day comment period.

DATES:

Comments are encouraged and will be accepted for an additional 30 days until June 8, 2015.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

If you have additional comments especially on the estimated public burden or associated response time, suggestions, or need a copy of the proposed information collection instrument with instructions or additional information, please contact Lauren Glaze, Statistician, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 810 Seventh Street NW., Washington, DC 20531 (email: Lauren.Glaze@usdoj.gov; telephone: 202-305-9628). Written comments and/or suggestions can also be directed to the Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Attention Department of Justice Desk Officer, Washington, DC 20530 or sent to OIRA_submissions@omb.eop.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Written comments and suggestions from the public and affected agencies concerning the proposed collection of information are encouraged. Your comments should address one or more of the following four points:

—Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, including whether the information will have practical utility;

—Evaluate the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used;

—Evaluate whether and if so how the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected can be enhanced; and

—Minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses.

Overview of This Information Collection

(1) Type of Information Collection: Reinstatement, with change, of a previously approved collection for which approval has expired.

(2) Title of the Form/Collection: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2015-2016 (formerly named the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Facilities).

(3) Agency form number, if any, and the applicable component of the Department of Justice sponsoring the collection: The form number of the questionnaire is NPS-25. The applicable component within the Department of Justice is the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Corrections Unit), in the Office of Justice Programs.

(4) Affected public who will be asked or required to respond, as well as a brief abstract: Primary: Individuals. Others: State government and Federal government. Affected public are prison inmates age 18 or older held in adult state or federal correctional facilities and the adult state and federal correctional facilities. The purposes of this omnibus survey are to generate reliable, nationally-representative estimates of the characteristics of prisoners in the United States, track changes in the characteristics of prisoners over time, conduct studies of special populations of prisoners, and identify policy-relevant changes in the prison population. The survey will also be used to produce subnational estimates of prisoners within jurisdictions that have the largest prison populations (i.e. 100,000 or more) in the nation. The 2015-2016 SPI survey builds upon prior surveys and is organized around the concepts of harm, risk, and reentry. Specifically, the harms that prisoners have perpetrated on society as measured by the severity of the offense, the incident characteristics of the offense and criminal history; the risk they pose for recidivism as measured by harm elements and additional risk factors such as ties to the community and mainstream institutions of social integration, such as pre-prison employment within the labor market; their challenges and expectations for reentry back into the community as measured by SPI through the extent of substance abuse, mental health, and medical problems of prisoners, treatment they may have received for problems, programs in which they participated while in prison, and their motivation (i.e., intrinsic or extrinsic) to participate in programs.

In addition to collecting the survey data, in an effort to minimize burden on facilities and inmates and to conduct future studies, inmates will be asked to provide consent to link their 2015-2016 SPI survey data to their criminal history records and any updates made to those records over the next 10 years. The administrative records will be used to augment the survey data and to conduct prospective recidivism studies of the 2015-2016 SPI sample of inmates who are released from prison within three to five years of completion of the survey. Inmates will also be asked to provide their Social Security number (SSN) to link their survey data to records from the Social Security Administration (SSA). The goal of this effort is to provide more detailed information about the pre-prison earnings and benefits of inmates without taking up more of their time during the interview.

(5) An estimate of the total number of respondents and the amount of time estimated for an average respondent to respond: The 2015-2016 SPI consists of a pretest and a national study. The goal of the pretest is to test the functionality of the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) instrument prior to fielding it on a national scale. The pretest will include one state and one federal correctional facility providing a roster of inmates at 0.5 hours per facility for a total of 1 hour; prison staff escorting 60 inmates to and from interview sites at 0.5 hours per inmate for a total of 30 hours; and 60 inmates responding to the questionnaire at 1.00 hours per interview for a total of 60 hours. The pretest will result in a total expected burden of approximately 91 hours. For the SPI national study, a maximum of 416 state and federal correctional facilities will provide a roster of inmates at 0.5 hours per facility for a total of 208 hours; prison staff will escort a maximum of 33,200 inmates to and from interview sites at 0.5 hours per inmate for a total of 16,600 hours; a maximum of 33,200 inmates will respond to the questionnaire at 1.00 hours per interview for a total of 33,200 hours; and a maximum of 50 state departments of corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisoners will provide post-survey follow-up information at 0.25 hours per jurisdiction for a total of 13 hours. The SPI national study will result in an expected maximum burden of approximately 50,021 hours.

(6) An estimate of the total public burden (in hours) associated with the collection: The estimated total public burden is 50,112 annual hours.

If additional information is required contact: Jerri Murray, Department Clearance Officer, United States Department of Justice, Justice Management Division, Policy and Planning Staff, Two Constitution Square, 145 N Street NE., 3E.405B, Washington, DC 20530.