CREATOR:  Dept. of Corrections.  Division of Resource and Information Management.

 

TITLE:  National Corrections Reporting Program data files

 

DATE:  1987-1999

 

VOLUME:  22.00 computer tapes, 1.00 cd-rom, and 1.00 volume

 

MEDIUM:               ADP tapes

                             cd-rom

 

ARRANGEMENT:  Data sets are arranged chronologically by calendar year.

 

RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS:  Three computer tapes with a version of the data that includes educational information about prisoners are restricted to agency authorized personnel.  Due to budgetary problems at the Dept. of Archives and History, user copies of this data for the years 1995-1999 with the educational information removed and user copies of the index that includes those years have not yet been produced.

 

TERMS GOVERNING USE:  Public access in the repository is limited to a Microsoft Access database that covers only the years 1987-1994 which is available in the Reference Room.

 

SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE:  These data files provide a comprehensive description of prisoners entering and leaving the custody of the South Carolina Dept. of Corrections.  The Dept. of Corrections generates these data sets for each calendar year from their online Offender Management Information System and forwards the data to the Federal Bureau of Census on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.  Duplicate data sets are retained for agency reference and historical purposes.  Major information elements in the National Corrections Reporting Program data sets include Dept. of Corrections (DOC) number, state identification (SCID) number, date of birth, race, sex, offense, county, other sentencing/admission data, period of time served, and date and condition of discharge.

 

FINDING AID:  An alphabetical inmate name index that includes the Dept. of Corrections (DOC) number, state identification (SCID) number, race, sex, and date of birth is included with the data files.  The Dept. of Corrections will generate a new inmate name index to supersede this index when further calendar year data sets are transferred to the repository.  The repository also holds a binder containing the National Corrections Reporting Program User's Guide and a copy of the South Carolina crime codes.  Photocopies of the most pertinent of this information are available in the Reference Room.

 

ADDITIONAL FORM:  Unrestricted portions of the series available from the repository on nine 6250 BPI EBCDIC 9 track cartridge tapes (including one tape of index) and on one ASCII cd-rom.

 

GENERAL NOTE:  Analysis of the 1987-1994 data when it was converted from ASCII files to Microsoft Access database tables for Reference Room use showed a total of 1619 data conversion errors in the eight calendar year data sets.  All but 82 of these resulted from null values in the date of birth or date of admission fields.  If there were data conversion errors, records were still converted.  8238 duplicates were found in the 1988 file; these duplicate records had the same date of admission and date of release.  Separate records for an admission and for a release are created even if the two events occur in the same year.  More detailed figures from this analysis are filed with the accession paperwork.

 

LINKING NOTE:  A separate record, entitled Agency history record, has been written for the Dept. of Corrections describing the functions and history of the agency.

 

HIERARCHICAL NOTE:  Forms part of the records of the Division of Resource and Information Management of the Dept. of Corrections.