Skip to content
MyData Login
 

Description & Citation--Study No. 7708

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:7708
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07708
 
Title:Police Departments, Arrests and Crime in the United States, 1860-1920
 
Principal Investigator(s):Eric Monkkonen
 
Bibliographic Citation:Monkkonen, Eric. POLICE DEPARTMENTS, ARRESTS AND CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES, 1860-1920 [AGGREGATED U.S. CITIES, 1860-1920] [Computer file]. ICPSR version. Los Angeles, CA: Eric Monkkonen, University of California [producer]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994.
 

Scope of Study

Summary:These data on 19th- and early 20th-century police department and arrest behavior were collected between 1975 and 1978 for a study of police and crime in the United States. Raw and aggregated time-series data are presented in Parts 1 and 3 on 23 American cities for most years during the period 1860-1920. The data were drawn from annual reports of police departments found in the Library of Congress or in newspapers and legislative reports located elsewhere. Variables in Part 1, for which the city is the unit of analysis, include arrests for drunkenness, conditional offenses and homicides, persons dismissed or held, police personnel, and population. Part 3 aggregates the data by year and reports some of these variables on a per capita basis, using a linear interpolation from the last decennial census to estimate population. Part 2 contains data for 267 United States cities for the period 1880-1890 and was generated from the 1880 federal census volume, REPORT ON THE DEFECTIVE, DEPENDENT, AND DELINQUENT CLASSES, published in 1888, and from the 1890 federal census volume, SOCIAL STATISTICS OF CITIES. Information includes police personnel and expenditures, arrests, persons held overnight, trains entering town, and population.
 
Subject Term(s):arrests, census data, crime, criminal justice system, police activity, police chiefs, United States
 
Time Period:1860 - 1920
 
Date(s) of Collection:1975 - 1978
 
Data Type:aggregate data, and administrative records data
 

Methodology

Data Source:annual reports of police departments, 1888 federal census volume, REPORT ON THE DEFECTIVE, DEPENDENT, AND DELINQUENT CLASSES, and 1890 federal census volume, SOCIAL STATISTICS OF CITIES
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:1984-03-18
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2005-11-04.
 
  2006-01-12 - All files were removed from dataset 4 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
 
  2006-01-12 - All files were removed from dataset 4 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
 
  2005-11-04 - On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Raw Data for 23 U.S. Cities, 1860-1920
  • DS2: U.S. Cities Data, 1880-1890
  • DS3: Aggregated U.S. Cities, 1860-1920
  • DS4: Codebook for All Parts
  • DS5: SAS Data Definition Statements for Raw Data
  • DS6: SAS Data Definition Statements for U.S. Cities Data
  • DS7: SAS Data Definition Statements for Aggregated Data
 

^ top of page