Summary
This data collection tabulates the number of persons convicted of felonies in state courts and describes their sentences. Data were collected from state courts and state prosecutors in 344 counties of the United States. The collection contains sociodemographic information such as age, race, and sex of the felon. Types of offenses committed include homicide, rape, and robbery. Adjudication variables referring to the process between arrest and sentencing are also a part of this dataset. Data can be analyzed at the national level or by individual counties.
Citation
Export Citation:
Funding
United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage
Restrictions
Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.
Sample
A two-stage stratified cluster sampling design was employed. At the first stage, 344 counties were selected from the 3,195 total counties in the nation. At the second stage, a systematic sample of felons sentenced for murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, felony larceny/motor vehicle theft, drug trafficking, and other offenses were selected from each county's official records.
Universe
Sentenced felons in the United States.
Data Source
official court records
event/transaction data
Original Release Date
1999-05-12
Version Date
2011-04-08
Version History
1999-05-12 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 consistency checks.
- Standardized missing values.
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
2001-03-27 Column locations of variables were corrected in the codebook to reflect the column locations in the data file. Frequencies in the codebook were also corrected.
2000-12-14 An errata page supplied by the principal investigator in reference to erroneous data for Dade County, FL, Pinellas County, FL, Washoe County, NV, Santa Clara, CA, and Otero County, CO, has been added to the codebook.
2011-04-08 All parts are being moved to restricted access and will be available only using the restricted access procedures.
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.
This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.