AndreaBozzo/ceres-open-data-index huggingface dataset:
The Impacts of Restrictive Housing on Inmate Behavior, Mental Health, and Recidivism, and Prison Systems and Personnel, Florida, 2007-2020

In partnership with the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC), this study a) collected prison administrative data to create person-level cohort-analysis files of inmates admitted to and released from Florida prisons between July 1, 2007 and December 31, 2015, b) collected stock population data of inmates incarcerated on June 30, 2011, c) examined recidivism outcomes, d) examined the effects of long-term solitary confinement on inmate behavior and mental health, and e) conducted a survey of prison personnel from November 4, 2019 to January 10, 2020, in order to conduct an analysis to address the need in public policy decision-making for evidence on the impacts of restricted housing on inmates, prisons and personnel, and public safety overall.
"Gotta Make Your Own Heaven": Guns, Safety, and the Edge of Adulthood in New York City, 2018-2019

This project investigated the experiences of New York City youth ages 16-24 who were at high risk for gun violence (e.g., carried a gun, been shot or shot at). Youth participants were recruited from three neighborhoods with historically high rates of gun violence when compared to the city as a whole--Brownsville (Brooklyn), Morrisania (Bronx), and East Harlem (Manhattan). This study explores the complex confluence of individual, situational, and environmental factors that influence youth gun acquisition and use. This study is part of a broader effort to build an evidence-based foundation for individual and community interventions, and policies that will more effectively support these young people and prevent youth gun violence. Through interviews with 330 youth, this study seeks to answer these questions:
What are the reasons young people carry guns?
How do young people talk about having and using guns?
What are young people's social networks like, and what roles do guns play in thesenetworks?
Interviews covered the following topics: neighborhood perceptions; perceptions of and experiences with the police, gangs, guns, and violence; substance use; criminal history; and demographics: race, gender, age, legal status, relationship status, living situation, location, number of children, drug use, and education.
Gangs on the Street, Gangs in Prison: Their Nature, Interrelationship, Control, and Re-Entry, Texas, 2016-2018

This study includes 802 interviews that were conducted in two Texas prisons with inmates who were within a week of release. 532 of these individuals were re-interviewed within roughly one month of their release and 482 were re-interviewed roughly nine months after release. In addition to interviews, Texas Department of Criminal Justice Records were made available to the research team and half of the interviews were conducted with identified gang members. This study assesses whether gang members can be surveyed in prisons with fidelity and reports descriptive statistics on gang and non-gang members. More than forty separate scales were included in the interview.
Evaluation of In-Prison Programming for Incarcerated Women: Addressing Trauma and Prior Victimization, United States, 2017-2020

The Urban Institute, in collaboration with the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA), the National Center on Victims of Crime (NCVC), and the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP), and with funding from the National Institute of Justice, conducted a two-tiered, 33-month, exploratory mixed methods study of the policies, programs, and practices used nationwide to address the needs of incarcerated women with prior trauma and victimization experiences and prevent in-custody victimization, aiming to generate actionable information for policymakers, practitioners, and program developers.
This is the first single, comprehensive study documenting the extent to which facilities implement trauma-informed and gender-responsive approaches to address women's victimization experiences, whether they offer victim services, the range of services offered, and the prevalence of trauma-informed practices in state-level women's correctional facilities. It establishes foundational knowledge for the field regarding the scope, structure, and composition of these approaches, including their trauma-informed components and use in women's correctional facilities.
Contents and Contexts of Cyberbullying: An Epidemiologic Study using Electronic Detection and Social Network Analysis, Iowa, 2014-2015

Using a multi-methods research design, this study classified the contents of cyberbullying messages, measured their frequency and associations with offline bullying, and examined whether and how peer groups in social networks promote these behaviors.
Beginning in January 2015, 164 adolescents from 2 Iowa middle schools, grades 6 through 8, were surveyed. Two surveys, one at the start of the spring semester and one at the end of spring 2015, gathered self-reported information on perpetration, victimization, and witnessing of online and offline bullying and the structure of peer networks. A total of 77 students furthermore participated in an electronic capture period from January through May 2015. Participant smartphones were equipped with an application that collected incoming and outgoing text messages and Facebook and Twitter activity, and also surveyed them weekly about their bullying experiences. Demographic information collected included age, grade, gender, ethnicity, parents' marital status, household composition, religiosity, and socioeconomic status.
Improving School Safety in the District of Columbia: Evaluating the Safe School Certification Program, 2016-2020

From 2016 through 2020, Child Trends, in partnership with the D.C. Office of Human Rights and the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, and with funding from the National Institute of Justice's Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, implemented and evaluated the Safe School Certification (SSC) Program, a three-year technical assistance model to support schools in strengthening organizational capacity across eight elements key to improving school climate: leadership, data, buy-in, policy and policy enforcement, student engagement, family and community engagement, training, and programs and practices. To help support schools' efforts, and to evaluate SSC's effectiveness, survey data were collected annually from students, parents, instructional staff, and non-instructional staff at participating schools using the U.S. Department of Education's School Climate Survey (EDSCLS), which was adapted to include measures of sexual orientation and gender identity, grit, and personal experiences of bullying and fights. Additionally, observations using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System - Secondary (CLASS-S) were conducted in a random sample of five classrooms in each participating school each year. Finally, as part of the implementation evaluation, interviews were conducted with the technical assistance providers, points of contact or leadership at participating schools, the SSC developer, and the manager of the Certification Advisory Board (CAB), which provided feedback to schools over the course of implementation through reviews of compiled workbooks.
Outcomes of DNA "Cold Hits": Social Science Research in Forensic Science, United States, 2000-2013

Through case studies in two sites, this project provides an in-depth view of the relationship between cases, DNA database hits and persons that contribute to those hits generated from two specific laboratories during two specific periods of time. It explores how well the primary Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database metric, the hit, may correspond to case-level criminal justice system outcomes and examines how an uploaded profile is an investment in both short-term and long-term investigative leads.
A two-pronged approach was designed to address these issues. First, laboratory processing and CODIS datasets was analyzed according to traditional metrics used to track CODIS utility, such as upload and hit rate per case, per profile and for different offenses and evidence types. Next, a survival analysis was conducted to describe how uploading specimens to CODIS creates hits both in the short-term (at or near the time of upload) and in the long-term.
Estimating the Prevalence of Wrongful Convictions, Virginia, 1973-1987

This study extends research on wrongful convictions in the United States and the factors associated with justice system errors that lead to the incarceration of innocent people. Among cases where physical evidence produced a DNA profile of known origin, 12.6 percent of the cases had DNA evidence that would support a claim of wrongful conviction.  Extrapolating to all cases in our dataset, the investigators estimate a slightly smaller rate of 11.6 percent. This result was based on forensics, case processing, and disposition data collected on murder and sexual assault convictions in the 1970s and 1980s across 56 circuit courts in the state of Virginia. To address limitations in the amount and type of information provided in forensic files that were reviewed in the Urban Institute's prior examination of these data, the current research includes data collected through a review of all publicly available documents on court processes and dispositions across the 714 convictions, which the investigators use to reassess prior estimates of wrongful conviction.
Assessing the Impact of Post-Release Community Supervision on Post-Release Recidivism and Employment, United States, 2004-2011

This study sought to examine the effect of of two separate forms of post-prison supervision on offender recidivism and employment outcomes: split supervision and conditional release supervision. In order to assess the effect of post-prison supervision on reentry outcomes for Florida inmates, this study addressed the following research questions:

What is the impact of post-release supervision on employment and recidivism?
Do various types of post-release supervision result in different outcomes of employment and recidivism?
How does the length of post-release supervision impact employment and recidivism?

Florida was chosen as the state of focus because of its shift from indeterminate to determinate sentencing and elimination of parole in the 1980s. Researchers used arrest data, corrections data, and employment data from the Federal Department of Corrections, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Florida Department of Revenue.
The Role of Social Networks in the Evolution of Al Qaeda-inspired Violent Extremism in the United States, 1990-2014

This study compiled data on American jihadists and other Islamic extremists recruited since the early 1990s. Specifically, "homegrown" terrorist, referring to Americans and other Westerners who are inspired to commit acts of terrorism or support those committing these acts in their home country on behalf of foreign terrorist organizations, are the main focus. The purpose of this research is to address the central question: How do foreign terrorist organizations mobilize Americans to carry out attacks on their behalf?
Variables collected include extremist group affiliation, criminal background, foreign fighter history if applicable, coconspirators and their relationship, and the location and nature of terrorist plots. Demographic variables include sex, ethnicity, immigration status, education, and profession.
Jurors' Judgments About Forensic Identification Evidence, Arizona, 2011-2014

This data file describes three different experiments that were designed to examine how differences in the way forensic scientific evidence is communicated affects jurors.
In each experiment, participants consisted of jury-eligible community members in Maricopa County, Arizona. Groups of participants attended a research session in which they were shown a 35-40-minute videotapes of one of two mock criminal trials (one, a rape case, centers around bitemark evidence, and the other, an attempted murder, centers around fingerprint evidence). Within each trial the content of a forensic scientist's testimony was manipulated. These manipulations involved: 1) whether the technique used by the forensic scientist was "high tech" or "low tech," 2) the amount of experience possessed by the forensic scientist, 3) whether the technique used by the forensic scientist had been scientifically validated, 4) whether the forensic scientist conceded that an error was possible, and 5) whether any exculpatory evidence was present at the crime scene.
Immediately following the trial, each individual participants completed a questionnaire in which they gave their individual impressions of the strength of the case. Following that, the group of participant would deliberate and attempt to reach a unanimous verdict. Finally, each individual participant completed an additional questionnaire that again measured perceptions of the case along with individual difference measures and demographics.
21st Century Corporate Financial Fraud, United States, 2005-2010

The Corporate Financial Fraud project is a study of company and top-executive characteristics of firms that ultimately violated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) financial accounting and securities fraud provisions compared to a sample of public companies that did not.  The fraud firm sample was identified through systematic review of SEC accounting enforcement releases from 2005-2010, which included administrative and civil actions, and referrals for criminal prosecution that were identified through mentions in enforcement release, indictments, and news searches.
The non-fraud firms were randomly selected from among nearly 10,000 US public companies censused and active during at least one year between 2005-2010 in
Standard and Poor's Compustat data.  The Company and Top-Executive (CEO) databases combine information from numerous publicly available sources, many in raw form that were hand-coded (e.g., for fraud firms: Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAER) enforcement releases, investigation summaries, SEC-filed complaints, litigation proceedings and case outcomes).
Financial and structural information on companies for the year leading up to the financial fraud (or around year 2000 for non-fraud firms) was collected from Compustat financial statement data on Form 10-Ks, and supplemented by hand-collected data from original company 10-Ks, proxy statements, or other financial reports accessed via Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR), SEC's data-gathering search tool.
For CEOs, data on personal background characteristics were collected from Execucomp and BoardEx databases, supplemented by hand-collection from proxy-statement biographies.
Impacts of Social Proximity to Bias Crime Among Compact of Free Association (COFA)-Migrants in Hawaii, 2017-2018

This study utilized respondent-driven sampling (RDS) among Compact of Free Association (COFA)-migrants in Hawaii to explore the harms of bias crimes on migrant communities. To examine the impacts of bias crimes on communities, the investigators examined the diffusion of negative psychological impacts, community impacts, and perceptions of safety for those who had been direct victims, those in the COFA-migrant community who are close to someone who has been a victim (proximal victim) but are not direct victims, and those who are members of the community but have not been a direct victim or know someone close to them who was a direct victim.
This study also examined the how negative impacts of bias crime ultimately impact the adaption of COFA-migrants who have immigrated in the attempt to build new lives in Hawaii.
Examining the Effectiveness of Indigent Defense Team Services: A Multisite Evaluation of Holistic Defense in Practice, Kentucky, Minnesota, Rhode Island, 2015-2018

The goals of this project were to: describe the implementation of holistic defense principles in three indigent defense programs; measure each program's impact on pretrial court practices, manner of disposition, sentencing, and other case outcomes; and explore an appropriate methodology to assess the cost-efficiency of these programs in comparison with traditional criminal defense practice. Researchers collected data on both holistic and traditional defense delivery via interviews, surveys, focus groups, observation during site visits, and administrative data from public defender and court information systems. This evaluation was conducted in three research sites: Rhode Island Public Defender (Providence office); Minnesota Public Defender (Minneapolis office); and the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy (Bowling Green office). The evaluation focused on adult criminal cases. A process evaluation examined how holistic defense has been implemented in each site. The impact evaluation used a quasi-experimental design that includes matched comparison groups and alternative statistical models to examine the relative impact of holistic defense on a range of outcomes, controlling for defendant characteristics. The project investigated the parameters necessary to conduct a cost-efficiency analysis within the context of holistic defense and, to the extent possible, began to estimate the costs/benefits of holistic defense services. In addition to data sets for archiving and a summary report to NIJ, anticipated work products include professional conference presentations, manuscripts for submission to professional journals, and research briefs.
Developing a Taxonomy To Understand and Measure Outcomes of Success in Community-Based Elder Mistreatment Interventions, New York City, New York, 2018-2019

Research tools available to help advance knowledge of effective community-based elder mistreatment (EM) interventions are limited. The field lacks an understanding of what success means in EM response program (EMRP) interventions, which work directly with victims to reduce the risk of re-victimization. Without establishing indicators of EMRP success, it is not possible to develop valid intervention outcome measures to compare different EMRP models toward the development of evidence-based practice. Informed by the EMRP practice principle of older adult self-determination, this study developed a victim-centric taxonomy of case outcomes that indicate EMRP success.
This study drew on two sources of data, including interviews with EM victims and a scoping review to inform taxonomy development. Prioritizing the perspective of victims, this study conducted interviews with 27 victims involved in EMRP services who vary in EM subtype, gender, and race/ethnicity.
The taxonomy of successful EMRP outcomes will serve as important research infrastructure to support the development of EMRP intervention outcome measurement in future research.
Optimizing Video Surveillance in Correctional Settings, Minnesota, 2015-2019

The Urban Institute and the Minnesota Department of Corrections (MnDOC) attempted to improve the surveillance system in two state correctional facilities: Stillwater (STW) and Moose Lake (ML). The goal of this study was to conduct a rigorous process and impact evaluation of the steps that STW and ML took to optimize their surveillance systems, which included repositioning existing cameras, installing new cameras, and making other infrastructural upgrades. In addition, ML integrated an audio analytic technology in their system that would alert on-unit security staff through a visual and audio alert when it detected sounds associated with anger, fear, or verbal aggression.
Quantitative administrative data was collected from ML and comparison facilities and comparative interrupted time-series (CITS) analyses were employed to examine changes in two outcomes (total misconduct incidents and guilty dispositions) following the intervention. To support the CITS, another unit in ML was identified that did not upgrade its surveillance system but was similar to the intervention housing unit in terms of population, architecture, and misconduct levels (internal comparison unit), and used the synthetic control method to create another comparison unit derived from the three other medium-security prisons operated by MnDOC (external comparison unit).
Understanding the Impact of School Safety on the High School Transition Experience: From Etiology to Prevention, Flint, Michigan, 2016

This is a multi-method study of school violence and victimization during the transition to high school. This study has two major data collection efforts. First, a full population survey of 7th through 10th grade students across 10 Flint Community Schools (fall 2016) -- which serve primarily African American and poor populations -- that will identify patterns of student victimization, including the location and seriousness of violent events, and examine the connections between school and community violence. This will be followed by a three-wave panel qualitative study of 100 students interviewed every 6 months beginning in the spring of their 8th grade year (spring 2017) and continuing through their 9th grade year.
The goal of the interviews will be to further the research from the survey and develop a deeper understanding of how school safety impacts the transition experience, school violence, including how communities conflict impacts school safety, and what youth do to protect themselves from school-related victimization.
Researchers integrated crime incident data from the Flint police department as a source for triangulation of findings. A community workgroup will provide guided translation of findings generated from mixed-methods analyses, and develop an action plan to help students successfully transition to high school. Results and policy implications will be given to practitioner, researcher, and public audiences through written, oral, and web-based forums. De-identified data will be archived at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.
Situational Factors and the Victim-Offender Overlap, Pennsylvania, 2013-2014

This study examines explanations for the victim-offender overlap using data obtained from male prison inmates and a community sample. It employs two different designs, both of which are based on situational analyses of incidents. First, respondents are asked about their frequency of victimization and offending, as well as other behaviors. Second, respondents are asked about a violent and non-violent conflict in which they were recently involved.