DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03923.v1
title: Community Context and Sentencing Decisions in 39 Counties in the United States, 1998
title: Version 1

description: This study aimed to understand the extent to which
 punishment is influenced by the larger social context in which it
 occurs by examining both the main and conditioning influence of
 community context on individual sentences. The primary research
 questions for this study were (1) Does community context affect
 sentencing outcomes for criminal defendants net of the influence of
 defendant and case characteristics? and (2) Does community context
 condition the influences of defendant age, race, and sex on sentencing
 outcomes? Data from the 1998 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS)
 were merged with a unique county-level dataset that provided
 information on the characteristics of the counties in which defendants
 were adjudicated. County-level data included unemployment, crime
 rates, sex ratio, age structure, religious group affiliation, and
political orientation.
description: This study aimed to understand the extent to
 which punishment is influenced by the larger social context in which
 it occurs by examining both the main and conditioning influence of
 community context on individual sentences. By examining community
 variation in criminal sentences, this study contributed to the
 knowledge of how formal social control (i.e., the criminal justice
 system) operates and is embedded within and shaped by local social
 context. The primary research questions for this study were (1) Does
 community context affect sentencing outcomes for criminal defendants
 net of the influence of defendant and case characteristics? (2) Does
 community context condition the influences of defendant age, race, and
sex on sentencing outcomes?
description: This study examined the influence of community
 context on several individual-level sentencing outcomes using data
 from the 1998 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) and a unique
 county-level dataset that provided information on the characteristics
 of counties in which the defendants were adjudicated. The SCPS
 provided detailed legal and extralegal data on felony defendants and
 their cases from 39 large urban counties across 17 states. These data
 were merged with a county-level dataset created specifically for this
 project. The county-level data provided detailed information on key
 community characteristics, such as the unemployment rate, crime rates,
 region, racial composition, sex ratio, age structure, political
 orientation, religious affiliation, and sentencing structures.
 County-level indicators of unemployment rates, racial composition, age
 structure, sex ratio, and geographic location were collected from the
 County and City Data Books (2000) and the Census Bureau Summary Tape
 Files (2000). County-level crime rates were gathered from the Federal
 Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for the year
 preceding the felony case filings (1997). Information on religious
 group affiliation at the county-level was obtained from the United
 States Census of Churches (1997). County-level indicators of
 political orientation were collected from the American National
 Election Study (1996). Finally, indicators of type of sentencing
 structure and guidelines at the county-level were gathered from the
 United States Department of Justice National Survey of State
 Sentencing Structures (1998). The merged data were used to assess the
 main and conditioning effects of several community conditions on the
 nature and severity of sentences received by individual defendants.
 Sentencing outcomes were measured by (1) the incarceration decision,
 (2) the nature of the specific sentence, and (3) the length of
 confinement term received. Since the SCPS data used for this study
 were obtained from STATE COURT PROCESSING STATISTICS, 1990, 1992,
 1994, 1996, AND 1998: FELONY DEFENDANTS IN LARGE URBAN COUNTIES (ICPSR
 2038), this data collection only contains the county-level data that
were collected to measure community characteristics.
description: Variables include state and county FIPS codes,
 percent unemployed, number of males per females, percent 65 years and
 older, violent crimes per 100,000 residents, sentencing structure,
 whether the county was located in the South, percent that voted
 Republican in the 1992 presidential election, percent Protestant, and
percent Black.
description: Response Rates: Not applicable.
description: Presence of Common Scales: None.
description: The counties included in this data collection were those
 that had data in the 1998 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS)
 collection. The SCPS employs a two-stage sampling strategy with 40 of
 the 75 most populous counties in the United States selected at the
 first stage and then a systematic sample of felony filings within each
 county selected at the second stage. In 1998 only 39 counties were
 selected because of the large number of felony filings that year. The
 second stage of sampling is designed to represent all defendants for
whom felony cases were filed with the court during the month of May.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Community Context and Sentencing Decisions in 39 Counties in the United States, 1998
description: Thirty-nine counties in the United States for which 1998
State Court Processing Data were available. Smallest Geographic Unit: counties
description: (1) This study was a multi-level analysis combining
 county-level and individual-level data. This data collection only
 contains the county-level data used in this study. The
 individual-level data are available as STATE COURT PROCESSING
 STATISTICS, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, AND 1998: FELONY DEFENDANTS IN
 LARGE URBAN COUNTIES (ICPSR 2038). The Final Report for this study
 details how cases were selected from ICPSR 2038 and how variables were
 created for the analyses. (2) The user guide and codebook are
 provided by ICPSR as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF
 file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be
 accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat
 Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is
provided on the ICPSR Web site.