The Source for Crime and Justice Data

Description & Citation--Study No. 9907

Bibliographic Description

Study No.:

09907

Title:

Murder Cases in 33 Large Urban Counties in the United States, 1988

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:

U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. MURDER CASES IN 33 LARGE URBAN COUNTIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1988. ICPSR version. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics [producer], 1988. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1996. doi:10.3886/ICPSR09907.v1

Scope of Study

Summary:

This study was conducted in an effort to better understand the circumstances surrounding murder cases in large urban areas. To evaluate the 75 largest counties in the nation, 33 counties were chosen. The ranking of these counties was based on a combination of crime data and population data. The criteria for including a case on a roster from which cases would be sampled was that (1) one or more defendants must have been arrested for murder and (2) the case must have been adjudicated during 1988. These cases were a sample of about half of all those in the 33 counties studied that had a murder charge brought to the prosecutors in 1988, or earlier, and that were disposed during 1988. When statistically weighted, the sample cases represent a total of 9,576 murder defendants in the nation's 75 largest counties. Demographic information on victims and defendants includes sex, date of birth, area of residence, and occupation. Variables are also provided on the circumstances of the crime, including the relationship between the victim and the defendant, the type of weapon used, the time of death, and the number of victims.

Subject Terms:

felony offenses, murder, offenders, population characteristics, urban areas, urban crime

Geographic Coverage:

United States

Time Period:
  • 1988

Date of Collection:
  • 1990

Universe:

Murder cases adjudicated in 1988 in the 75 largest counties of the United States.

Data Types:

event/transaction data

Methodology

Sample:

The 33 counties included in this collection were chosen by stratified sampling to represent the 75 largest counties in the nation. In counties with less than 200 murder cases adjudicated in 1988, all cases were chosen. In counties with more than 200 murder cases, random sampling was used to select 200 cases.

Data Source:

murder data from prosecutors' offices

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:

1993-10-11

Version History:

  • 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 5 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

  • 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.

  • 1996-11-21 A variable description list was added to the introduction in the codebook.

Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Incident Data
  • DS2: Defendant Data
  • DS3: Victim Data
  • DS4: Offense Data
  • DS6: SAS Data Definition Statements for Incident Data
  • DS7: SAS Data Definition Statements for Defendant Data
  • DS8: SAS Data Definition Statements for Victim Data
  • DS9: SAS Data Definition Statements for Offense Data