RECIDIVISM OF PRISONERS RELEASED IN 1994 is a database containing information on each of 38,624 sampled prisoners released from prisons in 15 states in 1994 and tracked for three years following their release. The majority of the database consists of information on each released prisoner's entire officially recorded criminal history (before and after the 1994 release). Sources for criminal history information are state and FBI automated RAP ("Records of Arrests and Prosecutions") sheets, which contain records of arrests, adjudications, and sentences. The study is the second major recidivism study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The first study, RECIDIVISM AMONG RELEASED PRISONERS, 1983: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 8875), tracked over 16,000 prisoners released in 11 states in 1983 for three years. These two studies are the closest approximation to "national" recidivism studies in the United States. They are distinguished by their large sample size (over 16,000 released prisoners in the first study, 38,624 in the second), geographic breadth of coverage (11 states in the first study, 15 in the second), length of prospective tracking (three years from date of release in both studies), ability to track the movement of released prisoners across state boundaries (both studies), and multiple measures of recidivism (both studies). Demographic data include race, ethnicity, sex, and date of birth.

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.

recidivism rates for persons released from state prisons with specific demographic, criminal history, and sentence attributes.

Represents return status within three years of release among inmates released to the community during a particular calendar year. Each data record represents a release to the community as a result of completing maximum sentence, reaching conditional release date, or being approved for release by the Board of Parole. The dataset includes data about release year, county of indictment, gender, age at release, and return status.

This data collection supplies annual data on the size of the prison population and the size of the general population in the United States for the period 1925 to 1986. These yearend counts include tabulations for prisons in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the federal prisons, and are intended to provide a measure of the overall size of the prison population. The figures were provided from a voluntary reporting program in which each state, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported summary statistics as part of the statistical information on prison populations in the United States.

Using data from RECIDIVISM OF PRISONERS RELEASED IN 1994: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 3355), this study developed an analytical approach to utilize detailed dated criminal arrest history information in order to investigate whether, and to what extent, incarceration is able to deter offenders from future offending. This data collection consists of the syntax for a SAS macro used to estimate individual specific offending micro-trajectories, project counterfactual trajectories, and to assess the actual post-release offending patterns against the backdrop of these counterfactuals. The arrest records of individuals were clustered in chronological order and were truncated after the first post-release re-arrest event. The key independent variables used in estimating the pre-release criminal history accumulation process included the arrest number, the age at first arrest, whether or not the individual was confined as a result of the previous arrest event, and a measure of the number of years taken to reach each arrest event cumulated through the last arrest event. The same set of basic variables were used to model first re-arrest after release (recidivism).