The purpose of the study was to investigate the criminal career patterns of violent offenders. These data are intended to facilitate the development of models to predict recidivism and violence, and to construct parole supervision programs. Original data were collected on young male offenders in 1964 and 1965 as they entered the California Youth Authority (CYA). At this time, data were collected on criminal history, including current offenses, drug and alcohol use, psychological and personality variables, and sentencing, and demographics such as age, education, work experience, and family structure. The data collection also contains results from a number of standardized psychological instruments: California Psychological Inventory, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, California Achievement Test Battery, General Aptitude Test Battery, Army General Classification Test, and the Revised Beta Test. After release from the CYA and over the following 20 years, subsequent arrest information was collected on the offenders, including the nature of the offense, disposition, and arrest and parole dates.

The purpose of this data collection was to measure the validity or accuracy of four recidivism prediction instruments: the INSLAW, RAND, SFS81, and CGR scales. These scales estimate the probability that criminals will commit subsequent crimes quickly, that individuals will commit crime frequently, that inmates who are eligible for release on parole will commit subsequent crimes, and that defendants awaiting trial will commit crimes while on pretrial arrest or detention. The investigators used longitudinal data from five existing independent studies to assess the validity of the four predictive measures in question. The first data file was originally collected by the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City and was derived from an experimental evaluation of a jobs training program called the Alternative Youth Employment Strategies Project implemented in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Miami, Florida, and New York City, New York. The second file contains data from a RAND Corporation study, EFFECTS OF PRISON VERSUS PROBATION IN CALIFORNIA, 1980-1982 (ICPSR 8700), from offenders in Alameda and Los Angeles counties, California. Parts 3 through 5 pertain to serious juvenile offenders who were incarcerated during the 1960s and 1970s in three institutions of the California Youth Authority. A portion of the original data for these parts was taken from EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF THE CHRONIC OFFENDER, [1978-1980: CALIFORNIA] (ICPSR 8226). All files present demographic and socioeconomic variables such as birth information, race and ethnicity, education background, work and military experience, and criminal history, including involvement in criminal activities, drug addiction, and incarceration episodes. From the variables in each data file, standard variables across all data files were constructed. Constructed variables included those on background (such as drug use, arrest, conviction, employment, and education history), which were used to construct the four predictive scales, and follow-up variables concerning arrest and incarceration history. Scores on the four predictive scales were estimated.

This survey of inmates in five California prisons was conducted by the RAND Corporation with a grant from the National Institute of Justice. Researchers distributed an anonymous self-administered questionnaire to groups of 10-20 inmates at a time. Using the self-report technique, the survey obtained detailed information about the crimes committed by these prisoners prior to their incarceration. Variables were calculated to examine the characteristics of repeatedly arrested or convicted offenders (recidivists) as well as offenders reporting the greatest number of serious crimes (habitual criminals). The variables include crimes committed leading to incarceration, rates of criminal activity, and social-psychological scales for analyzing motivations to commit crimes, as well as self-reports of age, race, education, marital status, employment, income, and drug use.

This data collection examines gang and non-gang homicides as well as other types of offenses in small California jurisdictions. Data are provided on violent gang offenses and offenders as well as on a companion sample of non-gang offenses and offenders. Two separate data files are supplied, one for participants and one for incidents. The participant data include age, gender, race, and role of participants. The incident data include information from the "violent incident data collection form" (setting, auto involvement, and amount of property loss), and the "group indicators coding form" (argot, tattoos, clothing, and slang terminology).

This data collection examines the relationship between individual characteristics and recidivism for two cohorts of inmates released from North Carolina prisons in 1978 and 1980. The survey contains questions on the background of the offenders, including their involvement in drugs or alcohol, level of schooling, nature of the crime resulting in the sample conviction, number of prior incarcerations and recidivism following release from the sample incarceration. The data collection also contains information on the length of time until recidivism occurs.

Felons in the California prison system are documented in this data collection. The data are arranged by year and type of movement within the prison system, and include admissions, paroles, parole violations, suspensions or reinstatements of parole, discharges, deaths, and executions. Each record contains information on certain characteristics of the person involved, such as age at admission, race, marital status, education, military history, occupation, number of prior arrests, escape record, date and type of releases, and parole violations.

This study examines the criminal activities of a group of young offenders after their release from prison to parole supervision. Previous studies have examined recidivism using arrests as the principal measure, whereas this study examines a variety of factors, including length of incarceration, age, sex, race, prior arrest record, prosecutions, length of time between parole and rearrest, parolees not prosecuted for new offenses but having their parole revoked, rearrests in states other than the paroling states, and the nature and location of rearrest charges. Parolees in the 22 states covered in this study account for 50 percent of all state prisoners paroled in the United States in 1978.

This data collection was designed to replicate the Rand Selective Incapacitation Survey and the Iowa Risk Assessment Scale using a group of Colorado offenders. The Iowa model provides two assessments of offender risk: (1) a measure of general risk to society and (2) a measure of the risk of new violence. The Iowa dataset includes crime information from defendants' self-reports and from official crime records. Both files contain important self-report items such as perceived probability of being caught, weapon used in the offense committed, months free on the street during the reference period, and detailed activity description during the free period. Other items covered include employment history, plans, reasons for committing the crime, and attitudes toward life, law, prisons, and police.

The purpose of the study was to quantify the effect of the embrace of DNA technology on offender behavior. In particular, researchers examined whether an offender's knowledge that their DNA profile was entered into a database deterred them from offending in the future and if probative effects resulted from DNA sampling. The researchers coded information using criminal history records and data from Florida's DNA database, both of which are maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), and also utilized court docket information acquired through the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) to create a dataset of 156,702 cases involving offenders released from the FDOC in the state of Florida between January 1996 and December 2004. The data contain a total of 50 variables. Major categories of variables include demographic variables regarding the offender, descriptive variables relating to the initial crime committed by the offender, and time-specific variables regarding cases of recidivism.