BJS was established by the Justice Systems Improvement Act of 1979. In 1995, OMB identified BJS as one of 10 principal statistical agencies within the federal government. As defined by OMB, the statistical activities of statistical agencies include the planning of statistical surveys and studies; and the collection, processing, or tabulation of statistical data for publication, dissemination, research, analysis, or program management and evaluation. BJS publishes annual data on criminal victimization, populations under correctional supervision, and federal criminal offenders and case processing. It provides periodic data series on the administration of law enforcement agencies and correctional facilities, prosecutorial practices and policies, state court case processing, felony convictions, the characteristics of correctional populations, criminal justice expenditure and employment, civil case processing in state courts, and special studies on other criminal justice topics. BJS is organizationally located within the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (see fig. 1). The highest-ranking executives of BJS (BJS Director) and the department’s Office of Justice Programs (Assistant Attorney General) are both noncareer officials appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Within BJS, only the Director is a noncareer appointee. BJS initiated the Police-Public Contact Survey pursuant to a mandate in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which required the Attorney General to collect information on the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers. The data were to be used only for research or statistical purposes and were not to contain any information that could reveal the identity of the victim or any law enforcement officer. BJS fielded its first pilot survey in 1996 with the goal of better understanding the types and frequency of contacts between the police and the public, and the conditions under which force may be threatened or used. The pilot survey consisted of 6,421 respondents. The three subsequent surveys (in 1999, 2002, and 2005) consisted of 80,543, 76,910, and 63,943 respondents, respectively. Multiple reports and press releases may be issued in connection with any of the surveys. The years in which reports and a single press release associated with the 1999 and 2002 surveys were issued are shown in table 1. Over the last several years, various types of guidance have been developed to help federal agencies such as BJS ensure the integrity of statistical information. In 1992, in response to requests from Congress and others as to what constitutes an effective statistical agency, the National Research Council began issuing best-practice guidelines. According to the Committee on National Statistics, which authored the guidelines, the guidelines have been widely cited and used by Congress and federal agencies, and have shaped legislation and executive actions to establish and evaluate statistical agencies. These recommended guidelines, which BJS and other statistical agencies may choose to voluntarily follow, cover the review, approval, and dissemination processes of products issued by federal statistical agencies. In its guideline document, Principles and Practices for Federal Statistical Agencies, the National Research Council indicated, among other things, that statistical agencies should provide high-quality data, take a strong position of independence, be perceived to be free of political interference and policy advocacy, and strive for wide dissemination of their results. In particular, according to the National Research Council, the quality guidelines are to cover the review process and include verification of sources and results, disclosure of limitations, and accuracy of results; approval process and include who has authority over the content and timing of the release of a product, and separation of policy from statistical information; and dissemination process and include the usability of information and its accessibility to a wide range of people. In February 2002 and September 2006, pursuant to the Information Quality Act of 2001, OMB issued policy and procedural guidance to federal agencies, including statistical agencies such as BJS, directing them to develop their own quality guidelines to help maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of the information they disseminate. OMB stated that it was essential that federal statistics be collected, processed, and published in a manner that guarantees and inspires confidence in their reliability. Specifically, OMB directed federal agencies to “adopt a basic standard of quality … as a performance goal,” and “take appropriate steps to incorporate information quality criteria into agency dissemination practices.” In response to OMB’s February 2002 guidance, the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, and BJS issued their own guidelines later that year. BJS issued a second edition of its guidelines in 2005. In formulating its guidelines, BJS stated that it sought to provide the public with additional information regarding its methods for ensuring the quality, utility, objectivity, and integrity of the statistics it publicly disseminates. As a component of the Department of Justice, BJS is governed by its own data quality guidelines, as well as the information quality guidelines promulgated by the Office of Justice Programs, Department of Justice, and Office of Management and Budget. The Department of Justice’s Information Quality Guidelines are intended to (1) provide the department’s components with a foundation for developing their own, more detailed procedures, (2) provide guidance to component staff, and (3) inform the public of the agency’s policies and procedures. The Office of Justice Programs’ information quality guidelines require its components—including BJS—to (1) assess the usefulness of the information to be disseminated to the public by continuously monitoring information needs, developing new information sources, or revising existing methods, models, and information products where appropriate; (2) ensure disseminated information is accurate, clear, complete, reproducible, and presented in an unbiased manner by using reliable data sources, sound analytical techniques, and documenting methods and data sources; and (3) protect information from unauthorized access, corruption, or revision. As in the case of the Department of Justice’s guidelines, the Office of Justice Programs provides guidance to its components in developing their own, more specific quality guidelines. For all four reports issued from the two Police-Public Contact Surveys, we found that BJS fully followed all of the review, approval, and dissemination guidelines available at the time of issuance. We considered a guideline to have been fully followed if our independent analysts determined that all aspects of the guideline were followed. (Our methodology for how we determined the extent to which BJS followed the guidelines is explained in app. I.) The extent to which BJS followed applicable, available guidelines when it issued its Police-Public Contact Survey reports is shown in table 2. For the first report issued from the 1999 survey, we found that BJS voluntarily followed the National Research Council’s 10 applicable existing guidelines; for the second report, we found that BJS voluntarily followed those 10, as well as 2 additional guidelines issued since the first report, for a total of 12. For each of the two reports based on the 2002 survey, we found that BJS followed all 23 available data quality guidelines that had by then been issued by the National Research Council, the Department of Justice, the Office of Justice Programs, and BJS itself. The data quality guidelines that BJS followed describe how agencies should review statistical information, obtain the approval of key decision makers, and publicly disseminate the information. While not all of the guideline-issuing organizations addressed the review, approval, and dissemination process, in total across the four organizations—the National Research Council, Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, and Bureau of Justice Statistics—all three areas were addressed. Some examples of the guidelines that BJS fully followed in its report issuance process are listed below. (For a complete list of all available data quality guidelines, see appendix II.) Components of the Department of Justice and Office of Justice Programs will review all information dissemination products for their quality (including objectivity, utility, and integrity) before they are disseminated. All BJS reports and other statistical products must be subject to an objective and appropriate verification process conducted by qualified BJS staff other than the author of the report. The statistical agency has recognition by policy officials outside the statistical agency of its authority to release statistical information without prior clearance. The statistical agency has authority for professional decisions over the scope, content, and frequency of data compiled, analyzed, or published. The objectivity of BJS statistics must be vigilantly protected at all times by BJS staff. On the basis of our analysis, BJS successfully followed all applicable quality guidelines for these survey-based statistical reports, which both BJS and we consider to be statistical products covered by the guidelines. Thus, we believe the agency took proper steps to help ensure the accuracy and integrity of the review, approval, and dissemination processes associated with issuing public reports based on the two surveys we reviewed. BJS concurred with our analysis. All of the reports were posted to the BJS Web site, where the information is to be accessible to the general public. For the single press release that was issued—that is, the 2001 press release based on BJS’s 1999 Police-Public Contact Survey—we determined that BJS fully followed 7 of the 10 applicable National Research Council guidelines available at the time. The 7 federal data quality guidelines that BJS fully followed are listed below. (1) A statistical agency should develop an understanding of the validity and accuracy of its data and convey the resulting measures of quality to users in ways that are comprehensible to nonexperts. (2) A statistical agency should use modern statistical theory and sound statistical practice in all technical work. (3) A statistical agency has maintenance of a clear distinction between statistical information and policy interpretations of such information by the President, the secretary of the department, or others in the executive branch. (4) A statistical agency should follow good practice, in reports and other data releases, in documenting concepts, definitions, data collection methodologies, and measures of uncertainty, and in discussing possible sources of error. (5) Effective dissemination programs include policies for the preservation of data that guide what data to retain and how they are to be archived for future secondary analysis.