Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

17. Department of Justice · Notable

Refocus the Bureau of Justice Statistics on core crime statistics

Not started

571 17. Department of Justice

“The Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics should focus the BJS on producing the statistics of greatest interest to everyday Americans, and hence of policymakers, rather than those of particular interest to criminal-justice academics. … The BJS should focus on the core statistics involving crime and punishment, such as those relating to serious crimes committed, imprisonment, time served, recidivism, and the like.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Moved nearby. The Department's own budget submission — the document the read queue held this item for — describes a Bureau whose remit is unchanged. The FY 2027 Office of Justice Programs congressional justification says BJS "collects, analyzes, publishes, and disseminates information on crime, people who commit crimes, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels", which is the full pre-existing scope including the systems-operation work the Quote wants set aside, and adds only that BJS's "national statistical collections support the Administration's focus on data-driven approaches to reduce crime" — a sentence about emphasis, not a decision about what the Bureau will and will not measure. Its money is flat: $55.0 million for Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, equal to FY 2026 enacted and $10.0 million below FY 2025, with $33 million for Criminal Justice Statistics covering victimization, corrections, law enforcement, federal justice systems, prosecution and adjudication, criminal histories and recidivism, and tribal communities. No directive, policy statement or reorganization refocusing the Bureau has been published. Earlier searches: the Federal Register Corpus for every BJS, NIJ and OJP notice in the window, the whitehouse.gov presidential-actions Corpus, and all 2,087 headquarters press releases from the department's press API; the Bureau's published activity is the routine renewal of its existing collections.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

One negative search covered the whole cluster of statistics and research asks: this one, #1589, #1590 and #1591.

  • The budget pages had moved, not gone (reviewed 2026-09-05). This item had been held open on justice.gov/jmd/budget-and-performance, which no longer exists; the live page is https://www.justice.gov/doj/budget-and-performance. The FY 2027 OJP narrative (https://www.justice.gov/jmd/media/1434636/dl?inline) reads cleanly; the passages above are on pages 2 and 26.
  • One structural change is on the record and does not reach this ask: the FY 2027 request consolidates COPS, OJP and OVW into a Bureau of Justice Grants headed by a single Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General. It rearranges who administers grants; BJS’s six sister program offices and its own statistical program are described as continuing.
Action
restrict
Object
Bureau of Justice Statistics
ID
1588