DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03355.v5
title: Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994
title: Version 5

description: RECIDIVISM OF PRISONERS RELEASED IN 1994 is a database containing information on each of 38,624 sampled prisoners released from prisons in 15 states in 1994 and tracked for three years following their release. The majority of the database consists of information on each released prisoner's entire officially recorded criminal history (before and after the 1994 release). Sources for criminal history information are state and FBI automated RAP ("Records of Arrests and Prosecutions") sheets, which contain records of arrests, adjudications, and sentences. The study is the second major recidivism study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The first study, RECIDIVISM AMONG RELEASED PRISONERS, 1983: [UNITED STATES] (ICPSR 8875), tracked over 16,000 prisoners released in 11 states in 1983 for three years. These two studies are the closest approximation to "national" recidivism studies in the United States. They are distinguished by their large sample size (over 16,000 released prisoners in the first study, 38,624 in the second), geographic breadth of coverage (11 states in the first study, 15 in the second), length of prospective tracking (three years from date of release in both studies), ability to track the movement of released prisoners across state boundaries (both studies), and multiple measures of recidivism (both studies). Demographic data include race, ethnicity, sex, and date of birth.
description: 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: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: Prisoners released during 1994 in the 15 states that the study covered. The 15 states account for about two-thirds of releases in the United States in a given year. Smallest Geographic Unit: state
description: The following 15 state Departments of Corrections participated in the study: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. These departments supplied Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) with information on each person released from prison in the state in 1994 (Note: Illinois releases are for fiscal year 1994 rather than calendar year 1994). These 15 states were chosen as a purposive sample, based on willingness to participate, the state's relative contribution to the overall national prison population, and the state's inclusion in the earlier study of recidivism conducted by BJS in 1983 (see ICPSR 8875). The 15 states supplied BJS with release records on 302,309 prisoners released in 1994, approximately two-thirds of all prisoners released in the nation. Using these records, the researchers drew a representative sample from each state, totaling 38,624 out of the 302,309 released prisoners, stratified by most serious conviction offense. More detailed information regarding sampling procedures can be found in the codebook that accompanies this data collection.