What Is the Census of Prosecutor Offices

The Urban Institute, in partnership with the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), is conducting a nationwide Census of Prosecutor Offices (CPO). This initiative will gather vital information from over 2,330 local prosecutor offices to create the most complete snapshot of prosecutorial work in the U.S. Whether your office is in a big city or a small rural county, your voice matters.

The CPO will gather key data on operations, staffing, and caseloads from over 2,330 prosecutor offices nationwide. This effort updates and expands on previous collections—a sample of offices in 2020 and a full census in 2007—to meet the urgent need for up-to-date, comprehensive insights into prosecutorial practices across the U.S.

Why It Matters for Your Office

We know local prosecutors are on the front lines, balancing heavy caseloads, limited staffing, and increasing responsibilities. This census can assist with:

• Help you compare your office to similar ones across the country
• Justify staffing and funding needs with reliable data
• Strengthening internal planning and external conversations
• Boost retention and inform stakeholders
• Highlight challenges and opportunities unique to your community

What Is the Bureau of Justice Statistics?

While BJS is located in DOJ, it is a statistical agency that independently reports data about the criminal justice system. Statistical agencies are a class of agencies that have a large number of protections surrounding privacy and data security.

The Evidence Act of 2018 coalesces a number of separate statutes surrounding the objectivity of research organizations across the federal government. Importantly for BJS's objectivity and its ability to protect data: Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA). These guidelines include:

• Confidentiality protections, purpose limitations, access limitations
• Data can only be used for statistical purposes (i.e. enumeration) and research purposes
• Data cannot be used for investigative purposes

BJS's authorizing statute from 1979 specifies that the agency reports objective information about criminal justice, independent from the rest of DOJ. It also specifies that BJS protects respondent privacy and securely stores data. BJS publishes a detailed set data protection guidelines (https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/bjs_data_protection_guidelines.pdf).

Reports will show national aggregate statistics, and some subgroups. Subgroups will be analytically useful to prosecutor offices, researchers, and stakeholders. It will not identify states, individual offices, or any contact information for office or person completing the survey. Tables will undergo disclosure review.

FAQs

Who/what is the Urban Institute?
The Urban Institute is a nonprofit research organization focused on social policy. The Justice and Safety Division of the Urban Institute is administering the CPO.

How can I participate in the census?
Either your chief prosecutor's or your official office's email address will be contacted in the Spring of 2026 with instructions to complete the CPO, a link to the survey's web portal, and a unique PIN to complete your office's response. In addition, a PDF of the CPO will be sent to allow offices to prepare responses with necessary staff before inputting it into the web portal. To make sure you have the correct contact individual ahead of the initial email, please contact the Urban Institute CPO team at CPO2025@urban.org.

Why should I participate in the census?
This CPO is the first of its kind since 2007, and there is crucial information to capture on the evolution of the field of prosecution. Your response will help fill the information gap on foundational operations of offices and help you see where you stack up compared to similar offices.

How long will it take to complete the census?
We estimate it will take 30-45 minutes depending on your responses and ability to track some of the information requested on staffing, expenditures, and aggregate case statistics.

Who will see my office's responses to the census? Will the information be kept confidential?
No one outside the Urban Institute and BJS CPO-focused team will be able to access your office's response. The only public information that will be shared is on aggregate data across the country. To see more on how the information gathered from the CPO is reported, please review BJS's previous prosecutor data collection reports at https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/national-survey-prosecutors-nsp.

Do I need to complete the census questionnaire in one sitting?
No. The wonderful thing about our web portal is anyone from your office can reply to the questionnaire when given the link and your office's unique PIN code. So, if you have certain staff who can pull staffing information and different staff that can answer case statistics, the questionnaire can be accessed from any person's device. Additionally, as you proceed in the web portal, your responses will be saved automatically, and you can move from section to section using the table of contents. Finally, we previewed the CPO questionnaire in the prenotification email sent on 8/26 itself by attaching a PDF version of the questionnaire. This gives offices the opportunity to coordinate among different staff to complete the questionnaire.

I have some questions. Who can answer them?
You can contact either the Urban Institute CPO team or the BJS CPO lead. The project email address is CPO2025@urban.org, but you can also contact project leads Andreea Matei (amatei@urban.org), Bill Adams (badams@urban.org), and George Ebo Browne (george.browne@ojp.usdoj.gov) with any questions.

I submitted my response, but I need to update my information. What should I do?
Contact the Urban Institute CPO team at CPO2025@urban.org to inform them of your request revisions and the team can work with your office to edit your response. Your responses will not be submitted until you click "Submit." Until that point, your responses will only be saved.

I can't log into the web survey/I don't know if my PIN is working.
Contact the Urban Institute CPO team at CPO2025@urban.org to inform them of your request revisions and the team can work with your office to troubleshoot any issues.

Will the frame of respondents be available to BJS?
Yes. The frame is necessary so BJS may manage the project and for use for future surveys.

Will the frame of respondents be linked to survey responses?
There will not be a raw or analytic data file available anywhere that reports both the survey responses and the person or persons answering the survey.

How will BJS disseminate data?
There will eventually be a public dataset at NACJD. Individual respondents or offices will not be identified, but states will be able to be identified. We will avoid disclosure of offices with a combination of data coarsening, top and bottom coding, and potentially other methods (such as synthetic data). Access will require application, IRB approval (not PUF, but access restricted to researchers).

How will BJS respond if requested provide identified information about individuals answering the survey?
BJS will not provide information about individuals answering the survey as that information is private and is protected by CIPSEA.

What are the details about the ways BJS will protect the data?
There are multiple ways BJS will protect the data. They include:

• Data will be stored and analyzed on BJS's encrypted file server.
• Server is encrypted.
• Access is limited at the user level.
• Can only access file server through password-secured encrypted laptops.
• Data are encrypted during transfer via a secure Box transfer site.
• Individual information about respondents will be separated from the survey responses.
• BJS's statutory guidelines: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/10132 and https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/10134