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Schools are a primary referral source to the juvenile justice system, helping create and perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline. Seeking to dismantle this pipeline in the city, the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) partnered with the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and the Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) to develop and operate the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program. Implemented in May 2014, all first-time offending youth aged 10 years or older who commit specified school-based minor misdemeanor or summary offenses on school property are diverted from arrest, referred to a Department of Human Services (DHS) social worker and community-based services, and face no consequences even if they decline services.

This evaluation examined long-term outcomes for diverted youth and sustained program impacts over five years. From a full sample of 3,616 diverted and arrested students, this study used a quasi-experimental design to compare data for diverted youth (quasi-experimental group; n = 1,281) and similar youth arrested in schools in the year before the program's implementation (quasi-control group; n = 531). PPD school police officers completed surveys regarding their knowledge and perceptions of the Diversion Program immediately before and after a training session held prior to its implementation, then on an annual basis through year five. A cost-benefit analysis of the program was conducted in partnership with the Vera Institute of Justice.

The data have been organized by analysis. Short-term analysis refers to two-year recidivism analyses and one-year child welfare involvement, and covers the full and quasi-control arrested samples and youth diverted in school years 2014-2015, 2015-2016, and 2016-2017. Long-term analyses include four-year graduation/drop-out, five-year recidivism analyses, and five-year child welfare involvement, and covers the full and quasi-control arrested samples and youth diverted in school year 2014-2015.

Short- and long-term recidivism outcome data (DS1 and DS2), police survey data before and after program implementation (DS3), and cost-benefit analysis tables (DS9) are included in this collection. Please refer to the User Guide for details on how to acquire additional data from SDP and DHS and steps to create the full analytic files for academic-related and child welfare involvement outcomes.

For this program evaluation, which utilized a randomized field experiment, two separate substudies were conducted: one investigated the "front door" Intensive Community Supervision (ICS) program that diverted prisoners into the community at the beginning of their prison terms, and the other studied the "back door" Intensive Supervised Release (ISR) program that provided enhanced supervision services for offenders who were just finishing their terms of confinement and had a residential mandate upon release from prison. The random assignment procedure began in October 1990 and continued until June 1992. Prison caseworkers in the Office of Adult Release (OAR) within the Minnesota Department of Corrections screened offenders for participation in the prison diversion program (ICS) according to established criteria. The RAND coordinator assigned offenders to the experimental program or to the control program (prison) by consulting a predetermined random list of assignments. For the ISR program, institutional caseworkers reviewed the treatment plans for offenders who were scheduled to be released from prison within the next six months. The same procedure for random assignment was used as in the ICS study. The final sample sizes were 124 in the ICS program and 176 in the ISR program. Parts 1 and 9, Background Data, include demographic information such as sex, race, education, marital status, number of dependents, and living arrangement at time of most recent arrest. Also included is information on the offender's prior employment history, drug use prior to drug treatment, status after random assignment, various probation/parole/release conditions ordered, and criminal record information for prior arrests, for the governing offense and for the offense immediately prior to the current prison admission. Each offender was also rated on various items relating to risk of recidivism and need for treatment. The 6-month, 12-month, and 13-month review data (Parts 2-4 and 10-12) record the same information for each month. Variables provide information on the current status of the offender, days under regular supervision, intensive community supervision, special services, electronic surveillance, detention or incarceration (jail or prison), and days on other status. Information was also recorded for each month during the review regarding number and type of face-to-face contacts, number and type of phone contacts, number of drug tests taken, number and type of monitoring checks performed, number and type of sessions in counseling, number of days job hunting or in training, hours of community service, number of days employed and amount of earnings, amount of fines and court costs paid, amount of victim restitution paid, and amount of probation fees paid. Because a large percentage of the ICS control offenders were expected to remain in prison during a 12-month follow-up (resulting in premature recidivism outcomes), recidivism data for all ICS offenders were collected for a period of 24 months after assignment to the study (Part 5). Part 5 contains up to three status codes and number of days at each status for months 1-25 for the ICS cases only. Also included is information on work release, violations of supervision, absconding, returns to jail, returns to prison, and other releases. Parts 6 and 13 provide drug violation data, including first and second type of drug, action taken, and number of days since random assignment. Parts 7 and 14 provide technical violation data, including technical violation, first, second, and third action taken, days from assignment to each action, and most serious action taken. Finally, Parts 8 and 15 provide arrest data, including arrest code, age at arrest, if convicted, conviction code, type of sentence, and age at disposition. Dates were converted by RAND to time-lapse variables for the public release files for purposes of time-at-risk analysis.

Much of the analysis of juvenile justice reform to date has focused on assessing particular programs and their impacts on subgroups of cases at a particular point in time. While this is instructive as to the effects of those initiatives, it is essential to evaluate the impact of policy across multiple levels and with multiple stakeholders in mind. Ohio has implemented a series of initiatives in its juvenile justice system designed to reduce reliance on state custody of youth in favor of local alternatives. In doing so, they have focused on multiple segments of the population of justice involved-youths throughout the state. The main vehicle for these shifts has been the state's Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternatives to the Incarceration of Minors (RECLAIM) legislation and a series of initiatives that have followed from its inception. Other steps were followed and programming modifications were made during the study period as well.

This research project focused on these initiatives as a case study of juvenile justice reform initiatives in order to provide insights about the impact of those recent reforms across multiple dimensions that were viewed as relevant to the discussion of juvenile justice reform. The data set analyzed at the individual level included the records of more than 5,000 youths sampled from cases processed from 2008 to 2015. First, presumed reductions in the number of youth committed to state residential correctional facilities in favor of community-based alternatives were analyzed. The relative effectiveness of residential facilities and community-based alternatives in terms of youth recidivism were then assessed with a subsample of 2,855 case records from randomly-selected counties.

A third research objective focused on county-level trends and variation. Specifically, the longitudinal trends in key juvenile justice inputs and official juvenile crime rates across Ohio's 88 counties were formally modeled using data from public reports, data collection with counties, and official juvenile arrest data archived by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Elements of the previous analyses (especially comparative recidivism rates) and cost data collected from existing sources and public reports were used in a preliminary fashion to quantify the potential return on investment that accrued from Ohio's investment in these juvenile justice initiatives.

This deposit contains two datasets: Individual Level Data and County Level Data. The Individual Level Data contains the following demographic data: age at admission, sex, and race (White, Black, Asian, Native American, and other).

The National Survey of Tribal Court Systems (NSTCS) is the first complete enumeration of tribal court systems operating in the United States and gathers administrative and operational information from tribal court systems, prosecutors' offices, and indigent defense providers operating in the United States. The NSTCS helps fulfill BJS's legislative mandate under the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 (TLOA; P.L. 111-211, 124 Stat. 2258 § 251(b)) to establish and implement a tribal crime data collection system. Data for the NSTCS were collected by Kauffman & Associates, Inc., an American Indian- and woman-owned management consulting firm, in collaboration with the Tribal Law and Policy Institute.

The National Survey of Tribal Court Systems (NSTCS) consists of three surveys specific to tribal court systems in the lower 48 states, Alaska Native villages, and the Code of Federal Regulations Courts (CFR Courts) operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Due to data collection challenges and the limited number of Alaska Native villages and CFR Courts that participated in this collection, the Tribal Courts in United States, 2014, report, data file and documentation include information only on tribal court systems in the lower 48 states.

Data for the 2014 NSTCS were collected through mail, email, and telephone nonresponse follow-up. Data on the number and type of tribal court systems were obtained from all eligible federally recognized tribes. The final universe of eligible respondents in the lower 48 states included 234 tribal court systems, of which 196 (83.8%) participated in the survey.

On January 1, 2011, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) launched "A Natural Experiment in Reform: Analyzing Drug Law Policy in New York," which was funded by the National Institute of Justice, and conducted by Vera, with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, and the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. This study sought to analyze the effects of recent changes in drug offense sentencing laws in New York State (NYS) and chronicle New York City's experience with drug law reform (DLR). This includes changes in sentencing outcomes for felony drug cases, reoffending, and cost implications, with the hope of informing NYS policy makers, and provide other states across the nation with research to inform their own DLR efforts.

Specifically, this study revolves around the following objectives: 1) describe how the DLR is reflected in actual sentencing outcomes and the extent to which practices of judges, lawyers, and defense attorneys have shifted in response to the reforms; 2) investigate how treatment diversion impacts reoffending and 3) analyze the cost implications of changing drug law sentencing policies. Researchers analyzed administrative data to describe the impacts of reforms on sentencing decisions, collected New York City arrest data for drug felonies between October 1, 2006 and September 30, 2011, and evaluated outcome data measuring recidivism and costs between pre and post DLR periods.

Numerous variables tracking offenders' progress through the criminal justice system were collected including admission to the Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison (DTAP) program, arrest and disposition jurisdictions, charges, sentencing, and drug court screening and admission. Arrestees' criminal history and rearrest figures, as well as their sex, race, and ethnic demographics were collected also.

With state courts facing record-breaking caseloads and tightening budgets, jurisdictions around the country have begun to seek alternatives to traditional case processing as early as possible in the criminal justice process. One existing alternative is prosecutor-led diversion, a model which allows jurisdictions to reroute low-level offenders from traditional case-processing at the front-end of the justice process, in many cases prior to formal charge or arraignment. Although prosecutor-led diversion programs (PDPs) have been a part of the American legal landscape for several decades, there is little to no descriptive literature of the model and only sporadic impact evaluations of specific programs. In response, the Center for Court Innovation, the RAND Corporation, and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys conducted a national, multi-method study with the following goals: (1) to synthesize existing knowledge of PDPs, (2) to produce a rich understanding of existing programs through in-depth case studies of programs in 11 sites nationwide, including program goals, target populations, and policies, and (3) to test PDP effectiveness in reducing recidivism, incarceration, psychosocial problems, and costs to the society and the economy through a prospective impact evaluation of 5 programs at 3 sites. Phase 1 consisted of in-depth interviews with key stakeholders at the 11 sites. Phase 2 consisted of focus groups with program participants, and an impact study of the effects of PDPs on case disposition, use of jail, re-arrest, and cost effectiveness.

This collection includes data from the Phase 2 impact study. Five programs from 3 of the 11 sites (Cook County, Illinois, Chittenden County, Vermont, and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin) were selected for quasi-experimental impact evaluations. For each program, the research team obtained a de-identified dataset containing demographics, criminal histories, and instant case outcomes.