Police Performance and Case Attrition in Los Angeles County, 1980-1981 (ICPSR 9352)

Version Date: Jan 18, 2006

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Principal Investigator(s):
Joan Petersilia; Allan F. Abrahamse; James Q. Wilson

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09352.v1

Version V1

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Summary

The purpose of this data collection was to investigate the effects of crime rates, city characteristics, and police departments' financial resources on felony case attrition rates in 28 cities located in Los Angeles County, California. Demographic data for this collection were obtained from the 1983 COUNTY AND CITY DATA BOOK. Arrest data were collected directly from the 1980 and 1981 CALIFORNIA OFFENDER BASED TRANSACTION STATISTICS (OBTS) data files maintained by the California Bureau of Criminal Statistics. City demographic variables include total population, minority population, population aged 65 years or older, number of female-headed families, number of index crimes, number of families below the poverty level, city expenditures, and police expenditures. City arrest data include information on number of arrests disposed and number of males, females, blacks, and whites arrested. Also included are data on the number of cases released by police, denied by prosecutors, and acquitted, and data on the number of convicted cases given prison terms.

Citation

Petersilia, Joan, Abrahamse, Allan F., and Wilson, James Q. Police Performance and Case Attrition in Los Angeles County, 1980-1981. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-01-18. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09352.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (85-IJ-CK-0072)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

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

1980 -- 1981

Date of Collection

1985

Data Collection Notes

  1. The data for the 28 cities are broken into 7 files.

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Sample

Eligible cities met all of the following criteria: (1) the city's demographic data were published in the 1983 COUNTY AND CITY DATA BOOK, (2) the police department made more than 300 felony arrests per year, and (3) the police department agreed to participate in the study. Fifteen arresting agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, were excluded.

Universe

Cities in Los Angeles County, California.

Data Source

(1) 1983 COUNTY AND CITY DATA BOOK, and (2) CALIFORNIA OFFENDER BASED TRANSACTION STATISTICS, 1980 and 1981

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

1990-10-16

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:
  • Petersilia, Joan, Allan F. Abrahamse, and James Q. Wilson. Police Performance and Case Attrition in Los Angeles County, 1980-1981. ICPSR09352-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1990. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09352.v1

2006-01-18 File CB9352.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

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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.