Criminal Justice Response to Victim Harm in the United States, 1981 (ICPSR 8249)

Version Date: Jan 12, 2006

Cite this study |

Principal Investigator(s):
Jolene C. Hernon; Brian Forst

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08249.v1

Version V1

Slide tabs to view more

Summary

This data collection examines the ways in which victim harm affects decisions regarding arrest, prosecution, and sentencing, and the impact of these decisions on the victim's perception of the criminal justice system. Five types of offenses were studied: homicide, sexual assault, burglary, robbery, and aggravated assault. The victim file contains information on personal characteristics, results of victimization, involvement in case processing, use of victim assistance service, satisfaction with case outcomes, and opinions about the court system. The police file and the prosecutor file variables cover personal background, screening decisions on scenario cases, communication with victims, and opinions about the role of victims in the criminal justice system. The prosecutor file also includes sentencing recommendations on the scenarios. Data in the judge file cover personal background, sentencing recommendations on the scenario cases, communications with victims, sources of information regarding victim harm, and opinions about the role of victims in the criminal justice system.

Citation

Hernon, Jolene C., and Forst, Brian. Criminal Justice Response to Victim Harm in the United States, 1981. [distributor], 2006-01-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08249.v1

Export Citation:

  • RIS (generic format for RefWorks, EndNote, etc.)
  • EndNote

Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (82-IJ-CX-0009)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Hide

Time Period(s)

1981

Date of Collection

1982-10 -- 1983-02

Data Collection Notes

  1. Codebook information for the following variables is not available: Victim File V3 and V31, Police File V3, Prosecutor File V3, and Judge File V3.

Hide

Sample

Eight sites were selected to represent regional variation in population size and types of victim services offered. The victim sample was a systematic sample selected from 1981 prosecutor files. Every tenth case up to 150 cases was taken from each site. Responses from criminal justice officials were obtained through convenience samples of police officers, prosecutors, and judges, all of whom were experienced with the five target offenses.

Universe

Population of victims and criminal justice officials in the United States.

Data Source

personal interviews, telephone interviews, and mailed questionnaires

Data Type(s)

Hide

Original Release Date

1989-09-26

Version History

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:
  • Hernon, Jolene C., and Brian Forst. CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESPONSE TO VICTIM HARM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1981. ICPSR ed. Conducted by Jolene C. Hernon and Brian Forst, Institute for Law and Social Research (INSLAW). Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1994. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08249.v1

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 5 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

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.

1989-09-26 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.
Hide

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.

NACJD logo

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.