The purpose of the study was to investigate the role and impact of forensic science evidence on the criminal justice process. The study utilized a prospective analysis of official record data that followed criminal cases in five jurisdictions (Los Angeles County, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Evansville, Indiana; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and South Bend, Indiana) from the time of police incident report to final criminal disposition. The data were based on a random sample of the population of reported crime incidents between 2003 and 2006, stratified by crime type and jurisdiction. A total of 4,205 cases were sampled including 859 aggravated assaults, 1,263 burglaries, 400 homicides, 602 rapes, and 1,081 robberies. Descriptive and impact data were collected from three sources: police incident and investigation reports, crime lab reports, and prosecutor case files. The data contain a total of 175 variables including site, crime type, forensic variables, criminal offense variables, and crime dispositions variables.

This data collection provides information on multiple prosecutions for individual offenders. The data are intended for use in the exploration and description of relationships among the various elements of the adjudication process (characteristics of the offender and offense and decisions made by various actors in the prosecution and sentencing of the offenders). The sampled incidents were drawn from two types of offenses: residential burglary and armed robbery. The collection includes only those incidents involving male offenders who were previously unknown to their victims and who were facing adjudication in adult court. The data collection instrument probed five areas for each offender and incident sampled: A. Related Incidents (information to identify all other incidents for which processing overlapped that of the sampled incident), B. Incident Description (information about the criminal incident itself, such as date and location of the incident, date of arrest, victims, weapons, accomplices, witnesses, and evidence), C. Adjudication Process (information such as bond amount, legal representation, adjudication events and outcomes, date of sentencing, and type and length of incarceration), D. Defendant (information about the defendant himself, including date of birth, race/descent, and employment status), and E. Prior Record (information about the defendant's record, such as his age at first arrest and first incarceration, the number of times he was incarcerated, and history of drug and/or alcohol abuse).

The purposes of this study are to describe sentencing outcomes in felony courts for selected serious offenses--homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and drug trafficking--and to establish a statistical series on sentencing outcomes in felony courts throughout the United States. The jurisdictions consist of cities and counties with an average population of 1.1 million. Among the jurisdictions, the sentencing schemes available varied, with both determinate and indeterminate sentencing practices in operation. The study distinguishes between core informational items such as criminal charges, type of sentence imposed and terms of the prison sentence, and optional items such as characteristics of the offense and the defendant, and how the case was processed.

Emerging from the tradition of econometric models of deterrence and crime, this study attempts to improve estimates of how crime rates are affected by the apprehension and punishment of persons charged with criminal activity. These data are contained in two files: Part 1, State Data, consists of a panel of observations from each of the 50 states and contains information on crime rates, clearance rates, length of time served, probability of imprisonment, socioeconomic factors such as unemployment rates, population levels, and income levels, and state and local expenditures for police protection. Part 2, SMSA Data, consists of a panel of 77 SMSAs and contains information on crime rates, clearance rates, length of time served, probability of imprisonment, socioeconomic factors such as employment rates, population levels, and income levels, and taxation and expenditure information.

This data collection focuses on adult cases of serious crime such as homicide (and related death investigations), rape, robbery, aggravated assault/battery, burglary, and arson. Data are included for Peoria, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, Kansas City, Missouri, and Oakland, California. The data consist of police, court, and laboratory records from reports submitted by police personnel during investigations of suspected criminal offenses. The primary source of information was police case files. Prosecutor and court files were reviewed for information regarding the disposition of suspects who were arrested and formally charged. Crime laboratory reports include information concerning the evidence submitted and the examiner's worksheets, notes, and final results. There are eight files in this dataset. Each of the four cities has one file for cases with physical evidence and one file for cases in which physical evidence was not collected or examined.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics This series tabulates the number of persons convicted of felonies in state courts and describes their sentences. Data were collected from state courts and state prosecutors in 300 counties of the United States. The collection contains socio-demographic information such as age, race, and sex of the felon. Types of offenses committed include homicide, rape, and robbery. Adjudication variables referring to the process between arrest and sentencing are also included. Data can be analyzed at the national level or by the individual counties.Years Produced: Every 2 years

These data assess the effects of the risk of local jail incarceration and of police aggressiveness in patrol style on rates of violent offending. The collection includes arrest rates for public order offenses, size of county jail populations, and numbers of new prison admissions as they relate to arrest rates for index (serious) crimes. Data were collected from seven sources for each city. CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, 1980 [UNITED STATES]: SUMMARY TAPE FILE 1A (ICPSR 7941), provided county-level data on number of persons by race, age, and age by race, number of persons in households, and types of households within each county. CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, 1980 [UNITED STATES]: SUMMARY TAPE FILE 3A (ICPSR 8071), measured at the city level, provided data on total population, race, age, marital status by sex, persons in household, number of households, housing, children, and families above and below the poverty level by race, employment by race, and income by race within each city. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 1980 data provided variables on total offenses and offense rates per 100,000 persons for homicides, rapes, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle offenses, and arson. Data from the FBI for 1980-1982, averaged per 100,000, provided variables for the above offenses by sex, age, and race, and the Uniform Crime Report arrest rates for index crimes within each city. The NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS for 1978 and 1983 (ICPSR 7737 and ICPSR 8203), aggregated to the county level, provided variables on jail capacity, number of inmates being held by sex, race, and status of inmate's case (awaiting trial, awaiting sentence, serving sentence, and technical violations), average daily jail populations, number of staff by full-time and part-time, number of volunteers, and number of correctional officers. The JUVENILE DETENTION AND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY CENSUS for 1979 and 1982-1983 (ICPSR 7846 and 8205), aggregated to the county level, provided data on the number of individuals being held by type of crime and sex, as well as age of juvenile offenders by sex, average daily prison population, and payroll and other expenditures for the institutions.

These surveys were part of a series of pretests conducted during the early 1970s to reveal problems associated with doing a nationwide study on victimization. They were done to determine the most effective reference period to use when questioning respondents in order to gain the fullest and most reliable information, to measure the degree to which respondents move incidents occurring outside the reference period into that period when questioned, and to explore the possibility of identifying incidents by a few broad general questions as opposed to a series of more specific probing questions.

This data collection was designed to assess the effects of the New York Juvenile Offender Law on the rate of violent crime committed by juveniles. The data were collected to estimate the deterrent effects of the law and to permit the use of an interrupted time-series model to gauge the effects of intervention. The deterrent effects of the law are assessed on five types of violent offenses over a post-intervention period of 75 months using two comparison time series to control for temporal and geographical characteristics. One time series pertains to the monthly juvenile arrests of 16- to 19-year-olds in New York City, and the other covers monthly arrests of juveniles aged 13 to 15 years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the control jurisdiction. Included in the collection are variables concerning the monthly rates of violent juvenile arrests for homicide, rape, assault, arson, and robbery for the two juvenile cohorts. These time series data were compiled from records of individual police jurisdictions that reported monthly arrests to the Uniform Crime Reporting Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The certainty and promptness of punishment have long been hypothesized to be important variables in deterring crime. This data collection evaluates whether sentencing reforms to enhance certainty of punishment and speedy trial laws to enhance promptness of punishment affected crime rates, prison admissions, and prison populations. Variables include state, year, crime reports, economic conditions, population (including age structure), prison population, prison releases, and prison admissions. The unit of observation is the state by the year.