Changing Patterns of Drug Abuse and Criminality Among Crack Cocaine Users: Criminal Histories and Criminal Justice System Processing: A User's Guide to the Machine-Readable Files and Documentation, Original Instruments, and Codebook

The crack defendants were arrested immediately following a period of intensive street-level drug law enforcement by the New York City Police Department, while cocaine defendants were arrested immediately following a similar period of intensive street-level enforcement and prior to the emergence of crack. The researchers focused on differences in law enforcement and court responses to the two drugs in New York City, with emphasis on the characteristics of the arrestees and the handling of the arrestees by the criminal justice system. The crack sample included all arrests between August 1, 1986, and October 31, 1986, that were verified as crack-related. The defendants involved with powdered cocaine came from the booking system for 1983 and 1984. The arrests were matched to a supplementary database, from which additional variables were extracted. The final sample contained 3,403 individuals in the crack group and 3,424 individuals in the powdered cocaine cohort, for a total of 6,827 cases. Tables, instrument, and coding information