Details

Subject(s)

• Criminals—California [Browse]
• Prisoners—California [Browse]
• Recidivists—California [Browse]

Related name

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

Series

• ICPSR (Series) ; 7797. [More in this series]
• ICPSR ; 7797

Restrictions note

Use of these data is restricted to Princeton University students, faculty, and staff for non-commercial statistical analysis and research purposes only.

Summary note

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.

Notes

• Codebook available in print and electronic format.
• Title from title screen (viewed on December 9, 2010).

Type of data

Extent of collection: 2 data files + machine-readable documentation (text) + SAS setup file(s) + SPSS setup file(s) + Stata setup file(s) + SAS transport + SPSS portable + Stata system.

Time and place of event

• Date(s) of collection: 1976-07--1976-08.
• Time period: 1976.

Geographic coverage

Geographic coverage: California, United States.

Funding information

Funding: United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice. 83-IJ-CX-0006.

System details

• Mode of access: World Wide Web.
• Extent of processing: 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: checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Methodology note

• Data source: self-enumerated questionnaires.
• Universe: male prisoners who were incarcerated in five California state adult correctional institutions in July and August of 1976.

Contents

Part 1: data file; Part 2: SAS data definition statements.

Cite as

Peterson, Mark A., Suzanne Polich, and Jan Michael Chaiken. SURVEY OF CALIFORNIA PRISON INMATES, 1976 [Computer file]. Conducted by the RAND Corporation. 2nd ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1994.

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