ASA President David Morganstein today sent letters to Attorney General Lynch and House and Senate Judiciary Committee Leadership regarding the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Attorney General version; Congress version). The letters urge “Senate confirmation for the BJS director—removed in 2012—be restored and the director’s term be changed from serving at the will of the president to a fixed term of at least four years staggered from the presidential elections.”
The letters were sent in because of the overdue reauthorization of BJS's umbrella organization, the Office of Justice Programs, and updates ASA's 2009 letter. Today's letter takes a narrower focus than the 2009 letters because the importance of restoring Senate confirmation of the director and due to positive changes for BJS within the Department of Justice. Senate confirmation was removed in 2012 as part of the "The Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011," which also removed Senate confirmation for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner and making the Census Bureau directorship a fixed, five-year term. (See this 8/1/12 blog entry and the links therein.)
The letters state,
It is imperative that policy discussions on the often contentious issues regarding crime and justice be informed by statistical data that are trusted by the public to be objective, valid, and reliable. As a letter recently signed by 20 former statistical agency heads states, “All sides of a policy debate should be able to look to the statistical data as objective and high quality. Any perception that the data have been influenced by a partisan perspective undermines the policy making and its administration.”
To ensure BJS data are viewed as objective and of highest quality, BJS must be seen as an independent statistical agency, wherein its data collection, analyses, and publication are under the sole control of the BJS. A statistical agency’s independence is greatly aided by presidential appointment and Senate confirmation because of the vetting and prestige it provides. The combination of the two—presidential appointment and Senate confirmation (PASC)—is especially important for establishing the director as independent and fully qualified. The fixed and staggered term further ensures both independence—because of the possibility of serving different administrations—and a fully qualified director. In addition, the PASC process ensures the director will maintain a stronger voice within DOJ and OJP to articulate budget and human resource needs to protect the long-term requirements of statistical series and the infrastructure underpinning the more than 60 national statistical programs on crime and justice and the nearly 50,000 agencies, offices, and institutions from which data must be collected.
The ASA making a strong case for the restoration of Senate confirmation is especially important given that NCES, the other statistical agency weakened in the 2012 legislation, is now on the verge of losing presidential appointment of its commissioner and otherwise being weakened. See these blog entries for more information:
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