Evaluation of Minnesota's Felony Sentencing Guidelines, 1978-1984 (ICPSR 9235)

Version Date: Mar 30, 2006

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Principal Investigator(s):
Terance Miethe, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Charles A. Moore, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09235.v1

Version V1

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Summary

This data collection gauges the effects of the Minnesota felony sentencing guidelines on prosecutional charging practices, plea negotiations, and sentencing decisions. The collection provides primary sources for evaluating the statewide changes in the determinants of charging and sentencing decisions after the sentencing guidelines were enacted. The statewide defendants file (Part 2) contains information on the offender's demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, and marital and employment status), year of disposition, descriptions of the convicted offense, criminal history score, type of sentence imposed, the presumptive disposition and duration of confinement, dispositional location in the sentencing grid of the guidelines, and types of dispositional departure from presumptive sentences. Variables in the eight-county sample data (Part 1) are similar to those available in the statewide data. However, the county sample data contain additional information on characteristics of cases and case processing variables such as whether the defendant was convicted of multiple behavioral incidents and various types of plea bargaining.

Citation

Miethe, Terance, and Moore, Charles A. Evaluation of Minnesota’s Felony Sentencing Guidelines, 1978-1984. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-03-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09235.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (85-IJ-CX-0054)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Date of Collection

1985 -- 1986
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Sample

The two data files represent two different samples. The statewide file contains all of the convictions in the state of Minnesota during the four years studied. The county file is a random sample from case files of convicted felons who were sentenced during the study period in eight Minnesota counties.

Universe

Convicted defendants in Minnesota.

Data Source

sentencing guidelines worksheets, state judicial information system summaries (SJIS), Minnesota's Department of Correction files, court transcripts, and various reports

Data Type(s)

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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:
  • Miethe, Terance, and Charles A. Moore. Evaluation of Minnesota's Felony Sentencing Guidelines, 1978-1984. ICPSR09235-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2002. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09235.v1

2006-03-30 File CB9235.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it 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.

2002-07-18 SAS and SPSS data definition statements were created for both files and the codebook was converted to PDF format.

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:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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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.