Offender Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS), 1981: California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Minnesota, New York, and Virginia (ICPSR 8277)
Version Date: Aug 8, 2005 View help for published
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United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08277.v5
Version V5
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Summary View help for Summary
Offender Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS) studies are designed to collect information by tracking adult offenders from the point of entry into the criminal justice system (typically by arrest) through final disposition, regardless of whether the offender is convicted or acquitted. Information is provided on arrest, police action, prosecutor action, level of charges, charges filed by the prosecutor, type of counsel, pretrial status, type of trial, sentence type, and sentence length. This allows researchers to examine how the criminal justice system processes offenders, to measure the changing volume of offenders moving through the different segments of the criminal justice system, to calculate processing time intervals between major decision-making events, and to assess the changing structure of the offender population.
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Access to these BJS-sponsored data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete an application through the Standard Application Process (SAP) Portal. The application requires users to provide information about their research team and project, explain why the requested data are essential to the research, and describe how the data will be used. Applicants are also required to complete and submit a NACJD Restricted Data Use Agreement and a BJS Privacy Certificate, and provide IRB review documentation.
Restricted Data Use Agreements available on the NACJD website are provided for reference only. Apply for access to BJS restricted-use data through the SAP Portal, where you will complete the application and submit all required documentation. If the application is approved, these data may be accessed from a requester secure site via ICPSR's secure download procedures.
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For reasons of confidentiality, the "day" variables in the dates have been blanked in the public release version of the data. Consequently, additional variables have been created to provide the elapsed time between the day of arrest and the days of the police disposition, the prosecutor/grand jury disposition, the final court disposition, and the sentencing date.
Universe View help for Universe
Persons in the United States who have achieved adult status (as specified by individual state laws) and who have been processed for felonies by the police, prosecutors, or courts, whether or not there is a final determination of guilt.
Data Source View help for Data Source
computerized court records
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HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1984-11-14
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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:
- U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. OFFENDER BASED TRANSACTION STATISTICS (OBTS), 1981: CALIFORNIA, OHIO, PENNSYLVANIA, UTAH, MINNESOTA, NEW YORK, AND VIRGINIA. Compiled by Regional Justice Information System. ICPSR08277-v5. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 2005-08-08. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08277.v5
2005-08-08 The data were reprocessed using resupplied data. Old ICPSR administrative variables were removed. The variables "Date of Arrest: Day," "Date of Police Disp: Day," "Date Prosec Dispos: Day," "Date Final Court Disp: Day," and "Sentencing Date: Day," previously removed from the data, have been included in the data files. A public version of the data has been created in which the Day variables are blanked and a restricted version of the data has been created in which the Day variables have not been blanked. Also, Part 2, which was an old frequency file, has been removed. The codebook and all the SAS, SPSS, and Stata collection files have been updated to reflect the changes.
1997-04-14 SAS data definition statements are now available for this collection and the SPSS data definition statements were updated.
1984-11-14 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:
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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