The Source for Crime and Justice Data

Description & Citation--Study No. 3318

Bibliographic Description

Study No.:

03318

Title:

National Jail Census, 1999

Principal Investigator(s):

United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Funding:

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Bibliographic Citation:

United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Jail Census, 1999. ICPSR03318-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-07-09. doi:10.3886/ICPSR03318.v3

Series:

National Jail Census Series

Scope of Study

Summary:

The 1999 Census of Jails is the seventh in a series of data collection efforts aimed at studying the nation's locally administered jails. Previous censuses were conducted in 1970, 1972, 1978, 1983, 1988, and 1993. The 1999 census enumerated 3,365 locally administered confinement facilities that held inmates beyond arraignment and were staffed by municipal or county employees. Among these were 47 privately operated jails under contract for local governments and 42 regional jails that were operated for two or more jail authorities. In addition, the census identified 11 facilities maintained by the Federal Bureau of Prisons that functioned as jails. The nationwide total of the number of jails in operation on June 30, 1999, was 3,376. For purposes of this data collection, a local jail was defined as a locally operated adult detention facility that receives individuals pending arraignment and holds them awaiting trial, conviction, or sentencing, readmits probation, parole, and bail-bond violators and absconders, temporarily detains juveniles pending transfer to juvenile authorities, holds mentally ill persons pending their movement to appropriate health facilities, holds individuals for the military, for protective custody, for contempt, and for the courts as witnesses, releases convicted inmates to the community upon completion of sentence, transfers inmates to federal, state, or other authorities, houses inmates for federal, state, or other authorities because of crowding of their facilities, relinquishes custody of temporary detainees to juvenile and medical authorities, operates community-based programs with day-reporting, home detention, electronic monitoring, or other types of supervision, and holds inmates sentenced to short terms. Variables include information on jail population by legal status, age and sex of prisoners, maximum sentence, admissions and releases, available services and programs, structure and capacity, facility age and use of space, expenditure, employment, staff information, and health issues, which include statistics on drugs, AIDS, and tuberculosis.

Subject Terms:

census data, correctional facilities, correctional system, corrections management, demographic characteristics, inmate populations, inmate programs, inmates, jail inmates, jails

Geographic Coverage:

United States

Time Period:
  • 1998-07-01--1999-06-30

Date of Collection:
  • 1999-06-30

Universe:

All locally administered jails in the United States.

Data Types:

aggregate data

Methodology

Data Source:

official records

Extent of Processing:

All archived data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. The archive also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, the archive performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Standardized missing values.
  • Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Access and Availability

Note:

Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.

Original ICPSR Release:

2002-06-07

Restrictions:

To protect respondent privacy, certain identifying information is restricted from general dissemination. To obtain the restricted-use file, researchers must agree to the terms and conditions of a Restricted Data Use Agreement. This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited.

Version History:

  • 2009-07-09 Data modifications for disclosure risk have been made. The following variables were masked using -1 as the code and "Masked" as the value label: V333 MALE ILLNESS/NATURAL CAUSES, V335 FEMALE ILLNESS/NATURAL CAUSES, V337 MALE AIDS, V339 FEMALE AIDS, V341 MALE SUICIDE, V343 FEMALE SUICIDE,V345 MALE HOMICIDE BY OTHER INMATE,V347 FEMALE HOMICIDE BY OTHER INMATE, V349 MALE OTHER HOMICIDE,V351 FEMALE OTHER HOMICIDE, V354 MALE OTHER CAUSES OF INMATE DEATH, and V356 FEMALE OTHER CAUSES OF INMATE DEATH. The following variable was masked using MASKED as the value: V353 OTHER CAUSES OF INMATE DEATH SPECIFY. The following variables were masked by assigning a blank (" ") for all cases: V16p NAME OF THE ENTITY THAT OWNS THIS FACILI and V17p NAME OF THE ENTITY THAT OPERATES THIS FA.

  • 2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.

  • 2003-12-02 The principal investigator supplied a revised dataset, which was fully processed and released as the second edition of the collection. Corresponding changes were made to the codebook and data definition statements.

  • 2002-08-16 The first part of Appendix A, a statistical program, was deleted from the codebook.