Arrest and Incarceration Arrays - Appendix 6

There are two sets of variables related to respondent arrests and incarcerations. These event history arrays consist of monthly variables that document the number of arrests and incarcerations in each month starting at the respondent's 12th birthday. Using these arrays, researchers can extract the status of a respondent at a point in time or over time.

Please note: The variable INCARC_INCOMPLETE (Title: INCOMPLETE INCARCERATION HISTORY) has been created to indicate whether the incarceration event histories are affected by a round 7 questionnaire design change. For more information, see the codebook information for this variable in NLS Investigator.

ARREST EVENT HISTORY ARRAY: ARREST_STATUS_year.month

This array lists the respondent's number of arrests on a monthly basis. It starts in January 1992 (the month in which the oldest respondent turned age 12) and ends with the most recent publicly available interview date. Arrests and incarcerations that occurred before the respondent turned 12 are not be included in this array.  The codes and their definitions are as follows:

Missing and imputed values. Occasionally, respondents cannot provide information about arrest dates and the number of arrests. In early rounds of the survey, if respondents cannot provide the arrest date (both month and year) or the year of the arrest, the arrest is not populated in the arrest event history array. However, dates have been imputed for skipped arrests from round 7 onwards. In the main questionnaire, for respondents who reported 4 or more arrests since date of last interview, only the first and last arrests were dated. For the arrest arrays, the middle arrest dates were imputed as being evenly spaced between the first and last arrest dates. Where first or last arrest year or month was missing, it was imputed on a case-by-case basis based on last interview date and known arrest date information. 

If respondents cannot provide only the arrest month, then it is imputed using the month of the middle of the period since the last interview date. For example, if a respondent was interviewed in round 6 and in round 8, but not in round 7, the program will take the month from the mid-date between the round 6 interview date and the round 8 interview date. If respondents cannot provide arrest month in round 1, the missing month is set to June.

Arrest summary file: An arrest summary data set was also created to provide summary measures of the respondent's arrest event history. For each respondent, this data includes the first arrest date reported, the total number of arrests (both dated and undated) and the number of arrests with missing year, month or both month and year.

Link to Arrest Event History program file

INCARCERATION HISTORY ARRAY: INCARC_STATUS_year.month

This array lists the respondent's incarceration status on a monthly basis. It starts in January 1992 and ends with the most recent publicly available interview date. Once again, note that incarcerations that occurred before the respondent turned 12 will not be included in this array. Incarceration refers to jail or adult correctional facilities. Juvenile detention centers are not included. The codes and their definitions are as follows:

Missing and Imputed Values. Occasionally, respondents cannot provide information about entry and exit months/years for incarcerations. Where these were missing, they were imputed using known/given prior and future arrest date information as well as prior and future interview dates. For example, if a respondent indicated being actively incarcerated in one round’s interview and then not being incarcerated in the next interview, with no given exit date, the exit date was given as the mid-month between the interviews. If, instead, the respondent had a listed re-arrest date that was earlier than the next interview date, the mid-month between re-arrest and when the respondent was last known to be incarcerated (the prior interview date) was used. 

Incarceration dates are only given in month/year. Hence, a one day and a 30-day incarceration could both be marked as extending from the same month to the same month, if the 30-day incarceration started on the 1st and the respondent was released before the next month. For the summary values, any incarceration starting and ending in the same month is counted as a one-month incarceration. All longer incarcerations are equally inclusive, counting both the entry month and exit month as full months. These could be almost an entire month shorter depending on exact entry/exit dates.

Incarceration summary file: An incarceration summary file provides summary measures of the respondent's incarceration history. The variables in this data file for each respondent include the date of last interview with the respondent, the first entry date into incarceration, the total number of separate incarceration spells, the age at first incarceration, the length of the first incarceration and longest incarceration, as well as whether the respondent was currently incarcerated at the date of the last interview.

Link to Incarceration Event History program file