[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 251 (Friday, December 30, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 96519-96521]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-31697]


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DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

[OMB Number 1110-0057]


Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed eCollection 
eComments Requested; A Newly Approved Data Collection National Use-of-
Force Data Collection

AGENCY: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice.

ACTION: 30-Day notice.

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SUMMARY: The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 
Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) has submitted the 
following Information Collection Request to the Office of Management 
and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance in accordance with the 
established review procedures of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. 
The proposed information collection is published to obtain comments 
from the public and affected agencies. This proposed information 
collection was previously published in the Federal Register on October 
5, 2016, Volume 81, Number 193, Pages 69084-69087 allowing for a 60-day 
comment period.

DATES: Comments are encouraged and will be accepted for an additional 
days until January 30, 2017.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: To ensure that comments on the 
information collection are received, OMB recommends that written 
comments be emailed to [email protected].
    If you have additional comments especially on the estimated public 
burden or associated response time, suggestions, or copy of the 
proposed information collection instrument with instructions or 
additional information, please contact Ms. Amy Blasher, Unit Chief, FBI 
CJIS Division, Module D-3, 1000 Custer Hollow Road, Clarksburg, West 
Virginia 26306.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Written comments and suggestions from the 
public and affected agencies concerning the proposed collection of 
information are encouraged. Your comments should address one or more of 
the following four points:

--Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary 
for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including 
whether the information will have practical utility;
--Evaluate the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the 
proposed collection of information, including the validity of the 
methodology and assumptions used;
--Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be 
collected; and/or
--Minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are 
to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated, 
electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or 
other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic 
submission of responses.

Overview of This Information Collection

    1. Type of Information Collection: New collection.
    2. The Title of the Form/Collection: National Use-of-Force Data 
Collection.
    3. The agency form number: The form number is unnumbered. The 
applicable component within the DOJ is the FBI CJIS Division.
    4. Affected public who will be asked or required to respond, as 
well as a brief abstract:
    Primary: Local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement 
agencies.
    Other: Local, state, tribal, and federal government.
    Abstract: The FBI has a long-standing tradition of providing crime 
statistics collected from local, state, tribal, and federal law 
enforcement agencies on Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted 
(LEOKA) and justifiable homicides which enable transparency and 
accountability. To provide a better understanding of the incidents of 
use of force by law enforcement, the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) 
Program is proposing a new data collection for law enforcement agencies 
to provide information on incidents where use of force by a law 
enforcement officer (as defined by the LEOKA Program) has led to the 
death or serious bodily injury of a person, as well as when a law 
enforcement officer discharges a firearm at or in the direction of a 
person.
    The current LEOKA definition of a law enforcement officer is: ``All 
local, county, state, and federal law enforcement officers (such as 
municipal, county police officers, constables, state police, highway 
patrol, sheriffs, their deputies, federal law enforcement officers, 
marshals, special agents, etc.) who are sworn by their respective 
government authorities to uphold the law and to safeguard the rights, 
lives, and property of American citizens. They must have full arrest 
powers and be members of a public governmental law enforcement agency, 
paid from government funds set aside specifically for payment to sworn 
police law enforcement organized for the purposes of keeping order and 
for preventing and

[[Page 96520]]

detecting crimes, and apprehending those responsible.''
    The definition of ``serious bodily injury'' will be based, in part, 
on 18 United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 2246 (4), to mean ``bodily 
injury that involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, 
protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment 
of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty.'' These 
actions include the use of a firearm; an electronic control weapon 
(e.g., Taser); an explosive device; pepper or OC (oleoresin capsicum) 
spray or other chemical agent; a baton; an impact projectile; a blunt 
instrument; hands-fists-feet; or canine.
    Local, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies will 
provide information on characteristics of the incident, subjects of the 
use of force, and the officers that applied force in the incident. 
Agencies will also be asked to positively affirm, on a monthly basis, 
whether they did or did not have any use of force that resulted in a 
fatality, a serious bodily injury to a person, or firearm discharges at 
or in the direction of a person. Enrollment information from agencies 
and state points of contact will be collected at the initiation of the 
collection and updated no less than annually to assist with the 
managing of this data. The process for developing a robust national 
collection on use of force involves a multistage, collaborative 
approach. With this request, the FBI proposes a pilot study. The pilot 
study will be conducted in two phases, each with its own focus. The 
pilot study design will be informed by pretesting activities conducted 
under the FBI's generic clearance [OMB 1110-0057] as discussed briefly 
here. Both pretesting and pilot efforts will rely upon effective 
collaboration between the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics 
(BJS) to achieve and maintain a high level of data quality in an 
efficient manner.

Pretesting

    Pretesting activities were conducted prior to the initiation of a 
pilot study and allowed for finalization of the data collection 
instructions and associated instructions before the pilot data 
collection. These activities provided the preliminary information 
needed to both construct the sample of targeted agencies for the pilot 
study and identify early problem areas that could be resolved prior to 
formal testing. The pretesting consisted of three parts: Cognitive 
testing of survey items (including those relating to the time of the 
incident and measures of serious bodily harm), testing of questionnaire 
design (to better assess respondent burden and functionality), and a 
canvass of state UCR program managers (to assist with developing the 
sample frame for the proposed pilot). Cognitive testing was conducted 
in a manner to capture differences in measurement by region and law 
enforcement agency type, should they exist. Testing of questionnaire 
design includes follow-up with respondents to assess any difficulty 
with definitions or administration. Canvassing state UCR programs 
indicates the means by which use-of-force statistics are reported--
either through the UCR Program itself or directly from state and local 
law enforcement agencies.

Pilot

    The purpose of the pilot study is to evaluate the quality of 
information collected through the use-of-force data collection tool 
against information collected through coding of state law enforcement 
records. Instructions and manuals, as well as training modules and 
curricula, all serve to help guide individuals at law enforcement 
agencies to translate their local records into a uniform manner when 
reporting. However, it may be difficult to communicate coding schemes 
based upon a common set of definitions. Therefore, after providing 
basic instructions to respondents, the pilot study will evaluate the 
accuracy of codes assigned by respondents to identify concepts with 
less consensus across locations and types of law enforcement agencies 
and thereby improve coding instructions. Potential sources of 
nonresponse and incomplete information will also be evaluated. Both 
phases of the pilot will include a set of target agencies and states 
that will allow for sufficient data to evaluate intercoder reliability 
in the application of definitions and guidance. The phases of the pilot 
differ by the mode of submission for incident data, the addition of 
site visits, and the number of sites recruited.

Phase 1

    The first phase of the pilot will provide a prospective comparison 
of reported incidents in the use-of-force data collection through the 
use-of-force data collection tool to the original records voluntarily 
provided by the reporting agency to the FBI. Those agencies that are 
recruited and agree to participate in the pilot study will understand 
that local records will be forwarded to the FBI upon submission of 
statistical information to the use of force data collection tool. The 
local case information will be redacted of any personally identifiable 
information prior to being forwarded to the FBI, and all local records 
will be destroyed upon completion of the pilot study.
    The goal of this review is to ascertain whether the agencies are 
applying the definitions and using the provided instructions in a 
uniform manner. The records review and comparison will also identify 
problematic areas where instructions need more detail or more training 
should be provided to agencies. The data will also be used in the 
planning of the second phase of the pilot that will involve a site 
visit to a subset of agencies. Finally, the FBI will work with state 
UCR program managers in the pilot states to identify any potential 
problems with local and state record-keeping that impedes the ability 
to provide the use-of-force information to the FBI.

Phase II

    The second phase of the pilot will include the set of agencies 
recruited for the first phase, as well as two additional states 
recruited to provide their use-of-force data in a bulk data submission. 
These states will be nominated based upon the information gained from 
the canvass of state UCR program managers during pretesting. The FBI 
will also continue to accept agencies and states that voluntarily 
provide data to the data collection.
    In addition to the records review and comparison begun during Phase 
1, Phase II will include targeted, on-site visits with a subsample of 
pilot agencies. The subsample will be selected to include different 
geographic areas. The primary goal of the on-site visits is to 
ascertain the level and source of underreporting of within-scope 
incidents--especially those with serious bodily injury or firearm 
discharges. The on-site visits will also allow for an assessment of 
local record-keeping capabilities and changes to the data collection 
process.
    At the conclusion of Phase II, the FBI will release a report 
detailing the results of its data collection, analysis, and 
recommendations to inform the design of a main study.
    5. An estimate of the total number of respondents and the amount of 
time estimated for an average respondent to respond: An estimated 
701,486 law enforcement officers will participate in the National Use-
of-Force Data Collection. The estimated burden hours per incident is 
0.63 for completion.
    6. An estimate of the total public burden (in hours) associated 
with the collection: Two separate burden estimates are provided for the 
proposed

[[Page 96521]]

collection--one for the pilot study and a second for the annual 
collection to include all law enforcement agencies. Burden estimates 
were based on sources from the FBI UCR Program, the BJS, and the 
Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The BJS has recently estimated that 
approximately 1,400 fatalities attributed to a law enforcement use of 
force occur annually (Planty, et al., 2015, Arrest-Related Deaths 
Program: Data Quality Profile, http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5260). In addition, the CDC estimates the 
incidences of fatal and nonfatal injury--including those due to legal 
intervention--from emergency department data. In their piece entitled, 
``The real risks during deadly police shootouts: Accuracy of the 
na[iuml]ve shooter,'' Lewinski, et al. (2015) estimates law enforcement 
officers miss their target approximately 50 percent of the time at the 
firing range and was used as a simple estimate for the number of 
firearm discharges at or in the direction of a person, but did not 
strike the individual. In addition, the UCR Program collects counts of 
the number of law enforcement sworn and civilian employees in law 
enforcement agencies.
    The table below uses a rate per officer to estimate the anticipated 
number of reports that could be received within the two pilot phases 
and an annual collection. Because the nonfatal injury due to legal 
intervention estimate from the CDC does not provide any overt measure 
of severity, these injuries are estimated to be as high as 82,283 or as 
low as 5,546. Based upon these estimates, the FBI is requesting 52,416 
burden hours for an annual collection of this data.

                                                            Estimated Burden for Pilot Study
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                                                                    Annual rate per officer         Estimated number of       Estimated burden hours
                                                            --------------------------------------       incidents      --------------------------------
                                                                                                  ---------------------- Estimated
             Timeframe                   Reporting group       Approximate                                                 burden
                                                                number of     Maximum    Minimum    Maximum    Minimum   hours per   Maximum    Minimum
                                                                officers                            (3 mos)    (3 mos)    incident
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Pilot I (3 months).................  Large agencies........         178,557      0.112      0.012      5,000        536       0.63      3,150        338
                                     Pilot I States........          54,781      0.112      0.012      1,534        165       0.63        966        104
Pilot II (3 months)................  Large agencies........         178,557      0.112      0.012      5,000        554       0.63      3,150        349
                                     Pilot I & II States...          82,172      0.112      0.012      2,300        247       0.63      6,140        156
Pilot Total (6 months).............  --                                  --         --         --     13,834      1,502       0.63     13,406        947
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                                         Estimated Burden for All Law Enforcement Agencies in Annual Collection
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                                                                                                                         Estimated
                                                               Approximate                                                 burden
             Timeframe                   Reporting group        number of     Maximum    Minimum    Maximum    Minimum   hours per   Maximum    Minimum
                                                                officers                                                  incident
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Collection (Annual)................  All agencies..........         701,486      0.112      0.012     83,200      8,700       0.63     52,416      5,481
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    If additional information is required contact: Ms. Amy Blasher, 
Unit Chief, United States DOJ, FBI CJIS Division, Crime Data 
Modernization Team, Module D-3, 1000 Custer Hollow Road, Clarksburg, 
West Virginia 26306.

    Dated: December 27, 2016.
Melody Braswell,
Department Clearance Officer for PRA, U.S. Department of Justice.
[FR Doc. 2016-31697 Filed 12-29-16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4410-02-P