New Jersey statewide criminal justice guidelines evaluation, 1979

About this book

This project was established to study the development, implementation, and use of statewide sentencing guidelines and to report the perceptions of criminal justice system personnel and inmates regarding those guidelines. Funded by the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, the project was carried out by the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice from October 1978 to June 1981. One part of the project consisted of interviews to determine the opinions of inmates about the relative seriousness of offenses, severity of punishments, appropriateness of penalties for various kinds of crimes, and the use of sentencing guidelines to structure judicial sentencing decisions. The 1979 New Jersey inmate data are in two files: Inmate Background Data, and Inmate Survey Data. The Inmate Background Data file includes 25 variables containing socio-economic, residential, and current and prior criminal history information in a random sample of Rahway, New Jersey State Prison inmates. Background information was collected for all of the inmates selected to participate in the 1979 New Jersey inmate survey. However, not all of those inmates selected agreed to be interviewed when the actual survey was conducted. The inmate background data file, therefore, includes information on both survey respondents and non-respondents. Frequency distributions for the variables are included in the Inmate Survey Data file, as is the survey instrument.