CJARS is proud to announce the three winners of the 2021 NSF-CJARS Research Fellowship Competition. We were humbled by the number of impressive applications that we received and we are excited for the research that our fellows will conduct. Welcome us in congratulating Siyu Liu, Chika Okafor, and Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill.

Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill

Director of Research and Data Analytics
Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney’s Office

Siyu Liu

Assistant Professor
Department of Criminal Justice
School of Public Affairs
Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg

Chika Okafor

Doctoral Student
Department of Economics
Harvard University

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to support small businesses. However, some businesses are not eligible for this program if an owner of 20% or more of the equity of the business has had certain disqualifying events based on their history of involvement in the justice system. The goal of this report was to estimate the overall impact of these criminal history disqualifications. You can download the report here. The report was also released as Census Bureau ADEP Working Paper ADEP-WP-2020-04.

In anticipation of researcher access to CJARS data through the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) system, CJARS has released a draft of the data documentation. Stay tuned for regular updates.