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series: Capital Punishment in the United States Series > study: Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-1987 >

Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-1987 (ICPSR 9210)

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

Summary:

This data collection provides annual data on prisoners under a sentence of death and on prisoners whose sentences were commuted or vacated. The data furnish 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, prior convictions for criminal homicide, and legal status at the time of the capital offense. Additional information is provided on those inmates removed from death row by yearend 1986, inmates receiving a second capital punishment sentence in 1987, and inmates who were executed.

Series: Capital Punishment in the United States Series

Access Notes

  • One or more files in this study are not available for download due to special restrictions; consult the restrictions note to learn more. Additional information can also be found in the Use Agreement.

    The data are restricted from general dissemination. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a restricted data Use Agreement form and specify the reasons for the request. A copy of the Restricted Data Use Agreement form can be requested by calling 800-999-0960. Researchers can also download this form as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file from the download page associated with this dataset. 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)

Dataset
Documentation:
Codebook.pdf User agreement.pdf
Download:
No downloadable data files available.

Study Description

Citation

United States Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-1987. ICPSR09210-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-11-12. doi:10.3886/ICPSR09210.v1

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09210.v1

Export Citation:

  • RIS (generic format for RefWorks, EndNote, etc.)
  • EndNote XML (EndNote X4.0.1 or higher)

Funding

This survey was funded by:

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

Scope of Study

Subject Terms:   capital punishment, commuted sentences, criminal histories, death row inmates, demographic characteristics, executions, felony offenses, prison inmates, sentencing, states (USA)

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

  • 1973--1987

Date of Collection:  

  • 1987

Universe:   All persons in the United States under sentence of death between 1973 and 1987.

Data Types:   event/transaction data

Data Collection Notes:

(1) Information in this dataset collected prior to 1972 is in many cases incomplete and reflects vestiges in the reporting process. (2) Users should note that Part 1, the Combined File contains duplicate identification numbers due to changes in the status of some inmates. These identification numbers were assigned by the Bureau of the Census and have no purpose outside this dataset.

Methodology

Data Source:

"Report of Inmates Under Sentence of Death," a data collection sent to state and federal prisons

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:

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

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:  1989-09-26

Version History:

  • 2008-11-12 Minor changes have been made to the metadata.
  • 2008-10-30 All parts have been moved to restricted access and are available only using the restricted access procedures.
  • 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.
  • 1997-05-30 SAS data definition statements are now available for this collection, and the SPSS data definition statements were updated.

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