Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-2012 (ICPSR 36166)

Version Date: Dec 17, 2020

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Principal Investigator(s):
United States. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36166.v2

Version V2 ()

  • V2 [2020-12-17]
  • V1 [2015-06-10] unpublished
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Summary

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1973-2012 provides annual data on prisoners under a sentence of death, as well as those who had their sentences commuted or vacated and prisoners who were executed. This study examines basic sociodemographic classifications including age, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status at time of imprisonment, level of education, and state and region of incarceration. Criminal history information includes prior felony convictions and prior convictions for criminal homicide and the legal status at the time of the capital offense. Additional information is provided on those inmates removed from death row by yearend 2012. The dataset consists of one part which contains 9,058 cases. The file provides information on inmates whose death sentences were removed in addition to information on those inmates who were executed. The file also gives information about inmates who received a second death sentence by yearend 2012 as well as inmates who were already on death row.

Citation

United States. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-2012. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-12-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36166.v2

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Funding

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

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

state

Restrictions

Access to these BJS-sponsored data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a NACJD Restricted Data Use Agreement available from the ResearchDataGov website, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Restricted Data Use Agreements available on the NACJD website are provided for reference only. Please visit the ResearchDataGov website to download the appropriate Restricted Data Use Agreement and submit your request. Once approved, data may be accessed from a requester secure site via ICPSR's secure download procedures.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1973 -- 2012

Date of Collection

2012

Data Collection Notes

  1. The inmate identification numbers were assigned by the Bureau of the Census and have no purpose outside this data collection.

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Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

All inmates on death row since 1973 in the United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Source

official prison records

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

2015-06-10

Version History

2020-12-17 The codebook was updated with a discrepancy note for variables V9 and V10.

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • United States. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-2012. ICPSR36166-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-12-17. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36166.v2

2015-06-10 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR 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, ICPSR 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.
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Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

  • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.