The Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS) is a cutting-edge data platform designed to fundamentally transform research and statistical reporting on the U.S. criminal justice system. The project’s ultimate goal is to enable research and statistics that legislators and administrators can use to develop evidence-based criminal justice policy.
CJARS is the first nationally integrated research data repository that follows individual offenses from arrest to charge to disposition to sanction. Data come from all types of criminal justice agencies and from across the U.S. At the University of Michigan, data are harmonized into a common schema that allows analysis across disparate jurisdictions. After secure transfer to the U.S. Census Bureau, CJARS data are anonymized and linked at the person-level to confidential social, economic, and demographic survey and administrative records to produce novel empirical analysis of criminal justice caseloads.
CJARS was founded in 2016 as a joint project of the U.S. Census Bureau and the University of Michigan. Start-up funding has been provided by the NSF, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Arnold Ventures, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Census Bureau.
For more information, visit the CJARS website here.
