Details

Editor

• Anwar, Shamena [Browse]

Related name

• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [Browse]

Series

• ICPSR (Series) 38274 [More in this series]
• ICPSR 38274

Summary note

Research examining racial disparities in the court system has typically focused on only one of the discrete stages in the criminal process (the charging, conviction, or sentencing stages), with the majority of the literature focusing on the sentencing stage. The literature has thus largely ignored the key early decisions made by the prosecutor such as their decision to prosecute, the determination of preliminary charges, charge reductions, and plea negotiations. Further, the few studies that have examined whether racial disparities arise in prosecutorial charging decisions are rarely able to follow these cases all the way through the criminal court process. This project sought to expand the literature by using a dataset on felony cases filed in twelve Virginia counties between 2007 through 2015 whereby each criminal incident can be followed from the initial charge filing stage to the final disposition. Using each felony case as the unit of analysis, this data was used to evaluate whether African Americans and whites that are arrested for the same felony crimes have similar final case outcomes.Cf: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38274.v1

Notes

Title from ICPSR DDI metadata of 2022-02-02.

Type of data

Numeric

Geographic coverage

• United States
• Virginia

Funding information

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice 2016-R2-CX-0042

Methodology note

Individuals arrested on felony charges that had their charges filed with the District Court in twelve counties in Virginia between 2007 to 2015.

Other format(s)

Also available as downloadable files.

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