Federal White Collar Violations Statistical Series

BJS is seeking applications to assist in designing and implementing a new statistical series that integrates criminal, civil, and regulatory enforcement data to comprehensively describe the federal response to white collar violations. The project requires data collection on federal regulatory agency enforcement actions. Further, the project requires development of methods to integrate data from regulatory agencies with criminal and affirmative civil enforcement data that BJS receives from the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. These data comprise part of the BJS Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP). BJS receives case-level criminal data from four other federal criminal justice agencies for the FJSP, as well. The data describe cases in every stage of the federal justice process, from arrest to imprisonment, for the years 1994-2010. FJSP contains individual case-level civil prosecution and court data, but does not currently incorporate regulatory enforcement data. The objective of this new series is to establish a comprehensive statistical resource on the federal response to white collar violations by integrating regulatory enforcement data with criminal and civil data from the FJSP. This will require the collection and standardization of regulatory agency data and the classification of white collar violations and the federal response to violations using regulatory, criminal, and civil sources of data. To assist BJS in this effort, the successful applicant will prepare an overview of each federal regulatory agency that enforces white collar violations; conduct an inventory and assessment of the quality of available data they have available; and develop and implement a plan to obtain case-level administrative data from these agencies. The applicant will classify white collar violations according to pertinent administrative code and federal criminal and civil statutes, and will propose and implement strategies to standardize collected regulatory data to minimize agency-specific differences for statistical reporting. In addition, the applicant will develop and implement a plan to identify white collar crime violations in the criminal and civil data collected by the FJSP.