Version Date: Nov 4, 2005 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07751.v5
Version V5
In February of 1978, locally operated jails were surveyed on a national scale. Of the more than 158,000 persons who were estimated to be held in these jails at that time, a sample of 5,247 inmates was drawn. Information was gathered regarding type of facility, availability of health care in the facility, personal and educational backgrounds, reasons for incarceration, sentencing, numbers of offenses, and inmate drug use.
Export Citation:
A random probability sample of 5,247 jail inmates was drawn nationally across the United States.
Jail inmates in the United States in 1978.
personal interviews
1984-03-18
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:
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.
1997-02-13 SAS and SPSS data definition statements are now available for this collection.
1984-03-18 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:
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.
ICPSR usually offers files in multiple formats for researchers to be able to access data and documentation in formats that work well within their needs. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR’s Accessibility Center.

This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.