Police Decision Making in Sexual Assault Cases Reported to LAPD and LASD, 2008

Cassia Spohn from Arizona State University created this dataset. It contains 650 sexual assault cases reported in 2008 to the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, with 261 variables extracted from detailed case files. The data includes administrative police information, victim and suspect details, and case outcomes.

Use Cases

• Predict case outcomes (e.g., arrest, unfounding) based on case complexities and evidentiary factors mentioned in the description.
• Analyze patterns of case attrition across different stages of the criminal justice process described in the study objectives.
• Identify predictors for why police unfound charges or clear cases by exceptional means, as detailed in the case file data.
• Model the relationship between victim characteristics, suspect information, and case outcomes extracted from the case files.

Strengths

• Contains 650 detailed case records, providing a substantive sample for analysis.
• Includes 261 variables per case, covering administrative, victim, suspect, and case outcome information.
• Data is derived from comprehensive case files including police reports, detective follow-ups, and victim statements, suggesting depth.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is known, but the specific variables and their data types are not detailed in the provided metadata.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias, being limited to Los Angeles in 2008.

Provenance

Source

Arizona State University (Cassia Spohn), via paperswithcode.

Collection Method

Mixed-methods research extracting quantitative and qualitative data from official police case files and interviews with detectives and district attorneys.

Time Range

Primary case file data is from 2008; outcome data spans 2005-2009.

Geography

Los Angeles, California, USA (specifically cases reported to LAPD and LASD).