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National Prisoner Statistics, 1978-2011

Metadata Updated: March 12, 2025

The National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) data collection began in 1926 in response to a congressional mandate to gather information on persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Originally under the auspices of the United States Census Bureau, the collection moved to the Bureau of Prisons in 1950, and then in 1971 to the National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, the precursor to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which was established in 1979. Since 1979, the Census Bureau has been the NPS data collection agent. The NPS is administered to 51 respondents. Before 2001, the District of Columbia was also a respondent, but responsibility for housing the District of Columbia's sentenced prisoners was transferred to the federal Bureau of Prisons, and by yearend 2001 the District of Columbia no longer operated a prison system. The NPS provides an enumeration of persons in state and federal prisons and collects data on key characteristics of the nation's prison population. NPS has been adapted over time to keep pace with the changing information needs of the public, researchers, and federal, state, and local governments.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: us-pd

Collection

This dataset is part of the following collection:

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date November 10, 2020
Metadata Updated Date March 12, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date November 10, 2020
Metadata Updated Date March 12, 2025
Publisher Bureau of Justice Statistics
Maintainer
Identifier 257
Data First Published 2013-06-25T10:59:58
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2013-06-25T10:59:58
Public Access Level public
Aicategory Not AI-ready
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Collection Package Id 2b050709-22ca-48b7-a0dd-35933b74f1e8
Harvest Object Id 2b564f85-844f-415b-b8cb-b72805093b76
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
Internalcontactpoint {"@type": "vcard:Contact", "fn": "Ask BJS Bureau of Justice Statistics (USDOJ)", "hasEmail": "mailto:askbjs@usdoj.gov"}
Jcamsystem {"acronym": "OJP_EXT", "id": 8, "name": "External system not available in CSAM"}
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Metadatamodified 9/2/2022 6:21:00 PM
Program Code 011:061
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > Bureau of Justice Statistics
Sourceidentifier https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34540
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 6745b75e19447a0934cf54763874106f6f1270abdd402d90a1947292184840b2
Source Schema Version 1.1

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