Profiling Inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail, 1996-1998
Description
By 1996 it became apparent that the Los Angeles county
jails faced a serious overcrowding problem. Two possible solutions to
the problem were to build more jail capacity or to divert a greater
number of incoming inmates to community-based, intermediate
sanctions. The research team for this study was asked to review a 1996
profile of inmates in the Los Angeles jail system and to determine how
many of them might have been good candidates for intermediate
sanctions such as electronic monitoring, work release, house arrest,
and intensive supervision. The researchers selected a sample of 1,000
pre-adjudicated (or unconvicted) inmates from the total census of
inmates in jail custody on January 15, 1996, to study in more detail.
Of the 1,000 offenders, the researchers were able to obtain jail and
recidivism data for two years for 931 inmates. For each of these
offenders, information on their prior criminal history, current
offense, and subsequent recidivism behavior was obtained from official
records maintained by several county agencies, including pretrial
services, sheriff's department, probation, and courts. Demographic
variables include date of birth, race, and gender. Prior criminal
history variables for each prior adult arrest include type of filing
charge, case disposition, type of sentence and sentence length
imposed, and total number of prior juvenile petitions sustained.
Current offense variables include arrest date, crime type for current
arrest, crime charge, type and date of final case disposition, and
sentence type and length, if convicted. Strike information collected
includes number of strikes and the offense that qualified as a
strike. Jail custody variables include the jail entry and exit data
for the current offense and the reason for release, if released.
Lastly, two-year follow-up variables include the date, type, and
disposition of each subsequent arrest between January 15, 1996, and
January 15, 1998.
Resources
| Name |
Format |
Description |
Link |
|
0 |
ICPSR03271.v2 |
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03271.v2 |
Tags
- sanctions
- offender-profiles
- recidivism
- criminality-prediction
- jail-inmates
- alternatives-to-institutionalization
- criminal-histories
- prison-overcrowding