Showing 1 – 4 of 4 results.
Curated
Restricted
Crime Control Effects of Prosecuting Intimate Partner Violence in Hamilton County, Ohio, 1993-1998 (ICPSR 25929)
Released/updated on: 2011-06-27
Geographic coverage: United States, Ohio
Time period: 1993-01-01--1998-12-31
The purpose of this research was to improve understanding of the conditions under which criminal sanctions do and do not reduce repeat violence between intimate partners. This study involved repeated reading and close inspection of four documents in order to compare and contrast the multivariate analyses reported by John Wooldredge and Amy Thistlethwaite (RECONSIDERING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RECIDIVISM: INDIVIDUAL AND CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS OF COURT DISPOSITIONS AND STAKE IN CONFORMITY IN HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO, 1993-1998 [ICPSR 3013]). The first part of this study's design involved the detailed literature review of four Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite publications between the years 1999 and 2005. The second element of the study's design required researchers to gain a detailed understanding of the archived data using the documentation provided by Wooldredge. The third element of the study's secondary analysis research design involved using the identified variables to reproduce the multivariate empirical findings about the effects of sanctions, stakes, and social context on repeat offending. These findings were presented in a series of tables in the four Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite publications. After numerous iterations of reading reports and documentation and exploring alternative measures and methods, researchers produced a report detailing their ability to reproduce Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's descriptive measures. This study's design called for using explicit criteria for determining the extent to which Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's findings could be reproduced. Researchers developed and applied three criteria for making that determination. The first was a simple comparison of the regression coefficients and standard errors. The second criterion was a determination of whether the reproduced results conformed to the direction and statistical significance levels of the original analyses. The third criterion was to apply a statistical test to assess the significance of any differences in the sizes of the original and the reproduced coefficients. The data archived by Wooldredge provided seven dichotomous measures of criminal sanctions (no charges filed, dismissed, acquitted, a treatment program, probation only, jail only, and a combination of probation and jail). Part of the design of this study was to go beyond reproducing Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's approaches and to reformulate the available measures of criminal sanctions to more directly test the prosecution, conviction, and sentence severity hypotheses. The researchers produced these tests by constructing three new measures of criminal sanctions (prosecution, conviction, and sanction severity) and testing each of them in separate multivariate models. The Part 1 (Hamilton County, Ohio, Census Tract Data) data file contains 206 cases and 35 variables. The Part 2 (Neighborhood Data) data file contains 47 cases and 12 variables. The variables in Part 1 (Hamilton County, Ohio, Census Tract Data) include a census tract indicator, median household income of tract, several proportions such as number of college graduates in the tract and corresponding Z-scores, a regression factor score for analysis 1, a socio-economic factor, a census tract number for the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a Cincinnati neighborhoods indicator. Variables in Part 2 (Neighborhood Data) include a neighborhood indicator, average age in the neighborhood, demographic proportions such as proportion male in the neighborhood and proportion of college graduates in the neighborhood, and a social class factor.
Curated
Phoenix [Arizona] Use of Force Project, June 1994 (ICPSR 6626)
Released/updated on: 2006-01-12
Geographic coverage: United States, Phoenix, Arizona
Time period: 1994-06-13--1994-06-27
In 1994, the Phoenix Police Department, in conjunction with Rutgers University and Arizona State University, designed and implemented a study on the use of force by and against Phoenix police officers. This study was concerned with describing the amount of force used in different arrest situations and determining the extent to which officer, suspect, offense, and arrest situation characteristics can predict the amount of force used. Data were collected primarily through a one-page, two-sided survey instrument given to police officers. In addition, screening interviews regarding the use of force during the arrest were conducted with both officers and suspects to assess the reliability of the officer surveys. During the screening interviews, officers and suspects were asked brief questions about the use and extent of force by officers and suspects. In the officer survey form, six potential areas of force were identified: voice, motion, restraints, tactics, weapons, and injuries. Three dimensions of weapons use--possession, threatened use, and actual use--were also recorded. Basic demographic information on officers and suspects, descriptions of the arrest, and information regarding injuries were also collected.
Curated
Partially restricted
Understanding the Use of Force By and Against the Police in Six Jurisdictions in the United States, 1996-1997 (ICPSR 3172)
Released/updated on: 2006-03-30
Geographic coverage: North Carolina, San Diego, Charlotte, Mecklenburg, United States, Texas, Colorado, St. Petersburg, California, Florida, Dallas, Colorado Springs
Time period: 1996-08-01--1997-02-28
This study examined the amount of force used by and against law enforcement officers and more than 50 characteristics of officers, civilians, and arrest situations associated with the use of different levels of force. An important component of this multijurisdiction project was to employ a common measurement of elements of force and predictors of force. Data were gathered about suspects' and police officers' behaviors from adult custody arrests in six urban law enforcement agencies. The participating agencies were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department, Colorado Springs (Colorado) Police Department, Dallas (Texas) Police Department, St. Petersburg (Florida) Police Department, San Diego (California) Police Department, and San Diego County (California) Sheriff's Department. Data collection began at different times in the participating departments, so the total sample included arrests during the summer, fall, and winter of 1996-1997. Forms were completed and coded for 7,512 adult custody arrests (Part 1). This form was used to record officer self-reports on the characteristics of the arrest situation, the suspects, and the officers, and the specific behavioral acts of officers, suspects, and bystanders in a particular arrest. Similar items were asked of 1,156 suspects interviewed in local jails at the time they were booked following arrest to obtain an independent assessment of officer and suspect use of force (Part 2). Officers were informed that some suspects would be interviewed, but they did not know which would be interviewed or when. Using the items included on the police survey, the research team constructed four measures of force used by police officers -- physical force, physical force plus threats, continuum of force, and maximum force. Four comparable measures of force used by arrested suspects were also developed. These measures are included in the data for Part 1. Each measure was derived by combining specific actions by law enforcement officers or by suspects in various ways. The first measure was a traditional conceptual dichotomy of arrests in which physical force was or was not used. For both the police and for suspects, the definition of physical force included any arrest in which a weapon or weaponless tactic was used. In addition, police arrests in which officers used a severe restraint were included. The second measure, physical force plus threats, was similar to physical force but added the use of threats and displays of weapons. To address the potential limitations of these two dichotomous measures, two other measures were developed. The continuum-of-force measure captured the levels of force commonly used in official policies by the participating law enforcement agencies. To construct the fourth measure, maximum force, 503 experienced officers in five of the six jurisdictions ranked a variety of hypothetical types of force by officers and by suspects on a scale from 1 (least forceful) to 100 (most forceful). Officers were asked to rank these items based on their own personal experience, not official policy. These rankings of police and suspect use of force, which appear in Part 3, were averaged for each jurisdiction and used in Part 1 to weight the behaviors that occurred in the sampled arrests. Variables for Parts 1 and 2 include nature of the arrest, features of the arrest location, mobilization of the police, and officer and suspect characteristics. Part 3 provides officer rankings on 54 items that suspects might do or say during an arrest. Separately, officers ranked a series of 44 items that a police officer might do or say during an arrest. These items include spitting, shouting or cursing, hitting, wrestling, pushing, resisting, fleeing, commanding, using conversational voice, and using pressure point holds, as well as possession, display, threat of use, or use of several weapons (e.g., knife, chemical agent, dog, blunt object, handgun, motor vehicle).
Curated
Partially restricted
Use of Force by the Montgomery County, Maryland Police Department, 1993-1999 (ICPSR 3793)
Released/updated on: 2006-03-30
Geographic coverage: United States, Maryland
Time period: 1993-01-01--1999-12-31
This study was designed to describe the types and amount of force used by and against the police in Montgomery County, Maryland, for the seven years between January 1993 and December 1999. The researchers collected data from the Montgomery County Police Department's Use of Force Reports and arrest records for this time period. Part 1 contains data obtained from the Use of Force Reports, including information about the characteristics of the force used, injuries and medical treatment, characteristics of the officer and citizen involved, and the time and date of the incident. Part 2 contains data from the arrest records, including variables for location, time, and date of the arrest, the most serious charge, and demographic characteristics of the officer and arrestee. Part 3 contains aggregate data, including rate of force by different arrest characteristics, that were derived from the data in Parts 1 and 2.