Survey of California prison inmates, 1976
By: principal investigators, Mark A. Peterson, Suzanne Polich, and Jan Michael Chaiken
Series: ICPSR -- 7797; ICPSR (Series) -- 7797
Publisher: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor
Published: 1970
Place of publication: Ann Arbor, Mich
Language: und
Format: [computer file] /
Subjects: Recidivists; Crime; Prisoners
Description: 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. The collection contains three files: the survey data, the documentation provided by the Rand Corporation, and frequency counts for the variables in the study.
Notes: Holding archive: Criminal Justice Archive and Information Network.

ICPSR data class: Class II.

Data collected: 1976.

California.

The collection is available in OSIRIS and card image formats.

624 respondents with 21 cards per respondent.

Peterson, Mark A., Harriet B. Braiker, with Suzanne Polich. Doing Crime: A Survey of California Prison Inmates. The Rand Corporation, 1980.