The data used for this evaluation come from multiple sources.
KBCOPS Data: Data from police incident reports and case follow-up records were extracted from the police department's computerized database (KBCOPS). The KBCOPS database included fields pertaining to the nature of the crime, victim information, and suspect information. KBCOPS was designed to capture a wealth of information. Unfortunately, many of the fields were left blank by the reporting officers. The researchers therefore focused their attention on those variables that were not plagued by high levels of missing data. These included suspect and victim demographic information, victim/offender relationship, highest offense category, weapon usage, victim injury, and case disposition status.
Police Narratives Data: Each KBCOPS file included a narrative account of the incident, written by the reporting officer. These narratives commonly contained information that had failed to be recorded in the KBCOPS data fields, or contained qualitative information that was not easily captured by those existing data fields. A standardized coding sheet was developed to record this supplemental data. A research assistant was trained in the use of this coding sheet and subsequently collected information on such variables as victim/offender relationship, weapon use (more refined that what is included in KBCOPS data), victim injury (also a more refined measure), and evidence collected.
Tracking Data: The KBCOPS data management system was used to identify future domestic violence cases involving the offenders who were included in the sample. Domestic violence cases involving the offender that occurred prior to the incident in the sample were also reviewed. The electronic files of these past and future cases were reviewed by research assistants, who coded detailed information regarding the nature of the offense, the level/type of harm inflicted, and if the assault involved the same victim in the sample. The future cases were used to determine recidivism. The inclusion of past cases permitted the researchers to control for prior domestic violence history in their recidivism analyses.
In a similar manner, past and future cases of domestic violence involving the victim in the sample were reviewed and coded. This information allowed researchers to conduct an analysis predicting future victimizations while controlling for past assaults. Finally, given the 891 suspects and 891 victims included in the sample, a decision was made not to attempt to code all past and future cases. Instead, the research assistant was instructed to review and record as many as two prior assaults and as many as three future assaults. While these were the only cases that were coded for detail, the research assistant was able to determine the total number of times the suspect appeared in a police incident report in KBCOPS. Likewise, the research assistant was able to determine the total number of times the victim's name appeared in a police incident report. Unfortunately, these data do not specify if the names appeared as a suspect in a case or a victim. However, these totals did speak to the differing lifestyles of the individuals in the sample, with some having greater exposure to crime (as either suspect or victim) than others.
Court/Jail Data: For each person arrested, jail records were checked to determine the amount of jail time a suspect may have had. This included both the time once spent in arrest processing, if not immediately released, and any time spent pre- or post-adjudication. All arrestees went through arrest processing at the jail (fingerprints, mug shots, and criminal history check -- a process that takes from four to six hours), but not all were technically booked unless assigned a cell until release. Court records were also reviewed and coded for all cases in the sample for which records could be found. This process yielded information pertaining to the court charges (as opposed to the charges at arrest) and case disposition status (e.g., guilty, not guilty, voluntarily dismissed, etc.).
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:
Terms of use are available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/20461/terms
AVAILABLE. This study is freely available to the general public.