| Summary: | The primary purpose of this data collection was to study whether prosecutorial behavior was affected by the implementation of federal criminal sentencing guidelines in 1987. Monthly time series data were constructed on a number of prosecutorial outcomes, representing either discrete decision steps in the processing of criminal cases or the characteristics of cases that passed through the system. Variables include disposition year and month, number of matters initiated, number of cases filed, declined, and dismissed, number of convictions by trial, by jury, and by bench trial, number of guilty pleas, ratio of guilty pleas to cases resolved, and ratio of trials to cases resolved. The collection also provides a series of dichotomous variables to assess the impact of various events on prosecutorial outcomes over time. These events include the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (effective November 1986), implementation of the sentencing guidelines (November 1987), Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 (November 1988), United States Supreme Court's decision in the Minstretta case affirming the constitutionality of the sentencing guidelines (January 1989), and Attorney General Thornburgh's memo outlining Justice Department policy on charging and prosecution (March 1989).
|
|---|
