Offender Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS), 1980: California, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Utah (ICPSR 8248)
Alternate Title: OBTS 1980
Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Summary:
Offender Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS) studies are designed to collect information by tracking adult offenders from the point of entry into the criminal justice system (typically by arrest) through final disposition, regardless of whether the offender is convicted or acquitted. Information is provided on arrest, police action, prosecutor action, level of charges, charges filed by the prosecutor, type of counsel, pretrial status, type of trial, sentence type, and sentence length. This allows researchers to examine how the criminal justice system processes offenders, to measure the changing volume of offenders moving through the different segments of the criminal justice system, to calculate processing time intervals between major decision-making events, and to assess the changing structure of the offender population.
Access Notes
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One or more files in this study are not available for download due to special restrictions; consult the restrictions note to learn more.
To protect respondent privacy, certain identifying variables are restricted from general dissemination. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Data Transfer Agreement Form and specify the reasons for the request. A copy of the Data Transfer Agreement Form can be requested by calling 800-999-0960 or 734-647-5000. The Data Transfer Agreement Form is also available as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file from the NACJD Web site at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/Private/private.pdf. Completed forms should be returned to: Director, National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 1248, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248, or by fax: 734-647-8200.
Dataset(s)
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Study Description
Citation
U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. OFFENDER BASED TRANSACTION STATISTICS (OBTS), 1980: CALIFORNIA, OHIO, NEW YORK, PENNSYLVANIA, AND UTAH. Compiled by Regional Justice Information System. ICPSR08248-v6. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 2005-08-08. doi:10.3886/ICPSR08248.v6
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08248.v6
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Funding
This survey was funded by:
- United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Scope of Study
Subject Terms: adult offenders, arrests, case processing, criminal justice system, disposition (legal), prosecution, policies and procedures, sentencing
Geographic Coverage: California, Ohio, New York (state), Pennsylvania, Utah, United States
Time Period:
- 1980
Date of Collection:
- 1980
Universe: Persons in the United States who have achieved adult status (as specified by individual state laws) and who have been processed for felonies by the police, prosecutors, or courts, whether or not there is a final determination of guilt.
Data Types: event/transaction data, and survey data
Data Collection Notes:
For reasons of confidentiality, the "day" variables in the dates have been blanked in the public release version of the data. Consequently, additional variables have been created to provide the elapsed time between the day of arrest and the days of the police disposition, the prosecutor/grand jury disposition, the final court disposition, and the sentencing date.
Methodology
Data Source:
computerized court records
Extent of Processing: 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:
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Version(s)
Original ICPSR Release: 1984-07-12
Version History:
- 2005-08-08 The data were reprocessed using resupplied data. Old ICPSR administrative variables were removed. The variables "Date of Arrest: Day," "Date of Police Disp: Day," "Date Prosec Dispos: Day," "Date Final Court Disp: Day," and "Sentencing Date: Day," previously removed from the data, have been included in the data files. A public version of the data has been created in which the Day variables are blanked and a restricted version of the data has been created in which the Day variables have not been blanked. Also, Part 2, which was an old frequency file, has been removed. The codebook and all the SAS, SPSS, and Stata collection files have been updated to reflect the changes.
- 1997-04-14 SAS data definition statements are now available for this collection, and the SPSS data definition statements were updated.
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