Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-2010 (ICPSR 34366)

Published: May 13, 2015

Cite this Study |

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

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34366.v1

Version V1

Summary

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1973-2010 provides annual data on prisoners under a sentence of death, as well as those who had their sentences commuted or vacated and prisoners who were executed. This study examines 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 and prior convictions for criminal homicide and the legal status at the time of the capital offense. Additional information is provided on those inmates removed from death row by yearend 2010. The dataset consists of one part which contains 9,058 cases. The file provides information on inmates whose death sentences were removed in addition to information on those inmates who were executed. The file also gives information about inmates who received a second death sentence by yearend 2010 as well as inmates who were already on death row.

Citation

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-2010. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2015-05-13. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34366.v1

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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.

Time Period(s)

1973 -- 2010

Date of Collection

2010

Data Collection Notes

The inmate identification numbers were assigned by the Bureau of the Census and have no purpose outside this data collection.

Universe

All inmates on death row since 1973 in the United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Source

official prison records

Data Type(s)

event/transaction data

Mode of Data Collection

mail questionnaire

Original Release Date

2012-11-28

Version Date

2015-05-13

Version History

2012-11-28 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.

2015-05-13 A minor change is made to the codebook.

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.

  • The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.
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.