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Assessing Consistency and Fairness in Sentencing in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, 2001-2002, 2004

Metadata Updated: February 13, 2023

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the integrity of sentencing outcomes under alternative state guideline systems and to investigate how this variation in structure impacted actual sentencing practice. The research team sought to address the question, to what extent do sentencing guidelines contribute to the goals of consistency, proportionality, and a lack of discrimination. The National Center for State Courts conducted an examination of sentencing patterns in three states with substantially different guidelines systems: Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia. The three states vary along critical dimensions of the presumptive versus voluntary nature of guidelines as well as basic mechanics. There are differences in the formal design, administration, and statutory framework of the Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia sentencing systems. For the 2004 Michigan Sentencing Outcomes Data (Part 1), the Michigan Department of Corrections Offender Management Network Information System (OMNI) provided sentencing guideline data for 32,754 individual offenders sentenced during calendar year 2004. For the 2002 Minnesota Sentencing Outcomes Data (Part 2), the Minnesota Sentencing Commission provided data for 12,978 individual offenders sentenced in calendar year 2002. The Virginia Sentencing Commission provided the Fiscal Year 2002 Virginia Assault Sentencing Outcomes Data (Part 3) and the Fiscal Year 2002 Virginia Burglary Sentencing Outcomes Data (Part 4). The Assault and Burglary/Dwelling crime groups have 1,614 and 1,743 observations, respectively. Variables in the four datasets are classified into the broad categories of conviction offense severity, prior record, offense seriousness, grid cell type, habitual/modifiers, departure, and extra guideline variables.

Access & Use Information

Restricted: This dataset can only be accessed or used under certain conditions. License: us-pd

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Dates

Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date February 13, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date February 13, 2023
Publisher National Institute of Justice
Maintainer
Identifier 3543
Data First Published 2009-11-30T15:04:49
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2009-11-30T15:08:00
Rights These data are restricted due to the increased risk of violation of confidentiality of respondent and subject data.
Public Access Level restricted public
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b91acdf0-502b-41ad-9393-1e4f40dd1309
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 46dfa11519440f8df05bbd659c230d77adb44cd4
Source Schema Version 1.1

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