Keeping the Peace: Police Discretion and the Mentally Disordered in Chicago, 1980-1981

For this data collection, information on police-citizen encounters was collected to explore the peacekeeping functions of the police and their handling of encounters with mentally ill persons. The data were gathered for part or all of 270 shifts through observations by researchers riding in police cars in two Chicago police districts during a 14-month period in 1980-1981. In Part 1 (Shift Level), information was collected once per shift on the general level of activity during the shift and the observer's perceptions of emotions/attitudes displayed by the police officers he/she observed. The file also contains, for each of the 270 shifts, information about the personal characteristics, work history, and working relationships of the police officers observed. Part 2 (Encounter Level) contains detailed information on each police-citizen encounter including its nature, location, police actions and/or responses, citizens involved, and their characteristics and behavior. A unique and consistent shift identification number is attached to each encounter so that information about police officer characteristics from Part 1 may be matched with Part 2. There are 1,382 police-citizen encounters involving 2,555 citizens in this collection.

本数据集旨在收集关于警方与民众遭遇的信息，以探讨警方在维护治安职能及其对精神病患者遭遇的处理方式。数据收集涵盖了1980年至1981年间的14个月，通过研究人员在芝加哥两个警察分局乘坐警车进行观察的方式，对270个班次的部分或全部时段进行了信息搜集。在第一部分（班次级别）中，对每个班次的活动总体水平以及观察者对其所观察到的警察情绪/态度的认知进行了收集。此外，该文件还包含了对于270个班次中观察到的警察的个人特征、工作历史和职业关系的信息。第二部分（遭遇级别）包含了每个警方与民众遭遇的详细信息，包括遭遇的性质、地点、警方行动及/或回应、涉及的民众及其特征和行为。每个遭遇都附有一个独特且一致的班次识别号，以便将第一部分中关于警察特征的信息与第二部分进行匹配。本数据集中共有1,382起警方与民众遭遇，涉及2,555名民众。