Federal Justice Statistics Program Data, 1978-1994: [United States] (ICPSR 9296)

Version Date: Jan 16, 2023

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Principal Investigator(s):
Abt Associates; Urban Institute

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09296.v8

Version V8 ()

  • V8 [2023-01-16]
  • V7 [2005-11-04] unpublished
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Summary

Data in this collection examine the processing of federal offenders. The Cases Terminated files (Parts 1-3 and 25-28) contain information about defendants in criminal cases filed in the United States Federal District Court and terminated in the calendar years indicated. Defendants in criminal cases may either be individuals or corporations, and there is one record for each defendant in each case terminated. Information on court proceedings, date the case was filed, date the case was terminated, most serious charge, and reason for termination is included. The Docket and Reporting System files (Parts 4-7, 31-34, and 42) include information on suspects in investigative matters that took an hour or more of a United States Attorney's time with one of the following outcomes: (1) the United States Attorney declined to prosecute, (2) the case was filed in Federal District Court, or (3) the matter was disposed by a United States magistrate. Codes for each disposition and change of status are also provided. The Pretrial Services data (Parts 8, 22, 43, and 47) present variables on the circuit, district, and office where the defendant was charged, type of action, year of birth and sex of the defendant, major offense charge, and results of initial and detention hearings. The Parole Decisions data (Part 9) contain information from various parole hearings such as court date, appeal action, reopening decision, sentence, severity of sentence, offense, and race and ethnicity of the defendant. The Offenders Under Supervision files (Parts 15-16 and 37-40) focus on convicted offenders sentenced to probation supervision and federal prisoners released to parole supervision. The Federal Prisoner files (Parts 18 and 20) supply data on when an offender entered and was released from confinement, as well as the amount of time served for any given offense. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts data files (Parts 44, 52, and 53) contain records of defendants in criminal cases filed in Federal District Court and terminated in the calendar years indicated. There is one record for each defendant in each case. Variables include the date the case was filed, offense level, AO (Administrative Office) codes, and disposition date. The Bureau of Prisons data (both the Master and Detail files, Parts 45, 46, and 54-57 -- formerly known as the Federal Prisoner files) contain records of sentenced prisoners admitted to or released from federal prison during 1992-1994. These files consist of separate records for each prisoner's commitment to federal prison, and for each sentence imposed on a prisoner for a given commitment to federal prison. The Central System (CS) and Central Charge (CC) files of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) include information about suspects in criminal matters and defendants in criminal cases in 1993-1994. Each defendant in a criminal matter has a master Central System record (Parts 50 and 51) and may have one or more Central Charge records (Parts 48 and 49). The Federal Probation/Supervision Data files (Parts 58 and 59) provide information on supervision procedures and the sequence of events and proceedings in 1992-1994 from the time a case was opened for supervision until the case was terminated. These include reports of parole violations, transfers of supervision to other districts, and case removals due to, for example, rearrest or hospitalization. The Sentencing Commission data (Parts 60 and 61) contain information on federal criminal cases sentenced in 1992-1994 under the Sentencing Guidelines and Policy Statements of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

Citation

Abt Associates, and Urban Institute. Federal Justice Statistics Program Data, 1978-1994: [United States]              . Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09296.v8

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics (87-BJ-CX-K063, and 91-BJ-CX-K025)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Restrictions

Access to these BJS-sponsored data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a NACJD Restricted Data Use Agreement available from the ResearchDataGov website, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Restricted Data Use Agreements available on the NACJD website are provided for reference only. Please visit the ResearchDataGov website to download the appropriate Restricted Data Use Agreement and submit your request. Once approved, data may be accessed from a requester secure site via ICPSR's secure download procedures.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1978 -- 1994

Data Collection Notes

  1. For users who wish to follow particular defendants as they progress through various federal agencies, a Match Index File (Part 10) is included. To track particular defendants, one must match records from two or more data files. The Match Index File contains the sequential record numbers and case identification numbers for all individual cases. The codebook provides further information on using the Match Index File with SAS and SPSS commercial software packages.

  2. The part numbers are not in consecutive order.

  3. There are undocumented codes in each data file.

  4. The Bureau of Prison files (Parts 45, 46, and 54-57) comprise two types of records, Inmate Master records and Inmate Detail records. Each prisoner has one or more Inmate Master records, containing summary information about the individual's term of incarceration. A prisoner with more than one commitment to prison (e.g., a returned parole violator) will have more than one Inmate Master record. One or more Inmate Detail records, containing detailed information about individual sentence counts, is associated with each Inmate Master record.

  5. Parts 45 and 46 (Inmate Master and Detail files) cover 1992 and a portion of 1993, thus overlapping with the data covered in Part 54, Bureau of Prisons Data: Inmate Detail File, 1993, and Part 56, Bureau of Prisons Data: Inmate Master File, 1993.

  6. The data in Parts 60 and 61, Sentencing Commission Data for 1993 and 1994, can also be found in MONITORING OF FEDERAL CRIMINAL SENTENCES, 1987-1995 (ICPSR 9317).

  7. The codebook for the 1993 and 1994 data is provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Website. There is also a hardcopy codebook for the 1978-1992 data. For some of the data files, there is no documentation other than the data definition statements.

  8. The following parts are not present in this collection: 11, 14, 29, 30, and 36.

  9. Part 12 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with parts 4-7.

  10. Part 13 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with part 8.

  11. Part 17 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with parts 15 and 16.

  12. Part 19 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with part 18.

  13. Part 21 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with part 20.

  14. Parts 23 and 24 each consist solely of a setup file, which should be used with part 22.

  15. Part 35 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with parts 31-34.

  16. Part 41 consists solely of a setup file, which should be used with parts 37-40.

  17. Users should note that additional edits may be needed in order to use the data.

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Universe

For the Docket and Reporting System data files, the universe is all suspects in federal offenses on whose case the United States Attorney spent one hour or more. For the Pretrial Services data, the universe is all federal arrestees interviewed for or granted pretrial release. For the Parole Decisions data, the universe is all offenders convicted, sentenced to prison, and eligible for parole. For the Offenders Under Supervision files, the universe is all offenders convicted and sentenced to probation and those released from prison to parole supervision. For the Bureau of Prisons data, the universe is all federal prisoners entering the federal prison system. For the Administrative Office data, the universe is all defendants in criminal cases filed in the United States Federal District Court and terminated in the calendar years indicated. For the Central System and Central Charge data files, the universe is suspects in criminal matters and defendants in criminal cases. Suspects in criminal matters are limited to those suspects whose matters were not declined immediately by United States attorneys. Defendants in criminal cases are limited to those handled by United States attorneys. For the Federal Probation/Supervision data, the universe consists of the offenders who are entering, leaving, or on federal supervision, including probation, parole, or supervised release. For the Sentencing Commission data, the universe is all federal criminal court cases entering the court system between 1987 and 1994.

Data Source

(1) COMPENDIUM OF FEDERAL JUSTICE STATISTICS, (2) FEDERAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE INDICATORS, (3) Special Reports on Federal Offenses and Offenders, (4) Executive Office for United States Attorneys Docket and Reporting System, (5) Federal Pretrial Services administrative records, (6) United States Parole Commission administrative records, (7) Administrative Office of the United States Courts records, and (8) Federal Bureau of Prisons records

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

1990-03-02

Version History

2023-01-26 2023-01-16 All datasets were moved from public to restricted access. These datasets will be re-released as a single zip file, rather than multiple datasets as originally released.

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:
  • Abt Associates, and Urban Institute. Federal Justice Statistics Program Data, 1978-1994: [United States] . ICPSR09296-v8. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-01-16. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09296.v8

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.

2000-08-04 Data for Part 18 have been edited and replaced. Binary characters and blanks were removed and/or replaced with 9's to indicate missing data.

1990-03-02 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.
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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.

  • 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.