Police departments, arrests and crime in the United States, 1860-1920

These data on nineteenth and early twentieth century police departments and arrest behavior were collected between 1975 and 1978 by Eric Monkkonen for a study of police and crime in the United States. Two of the datasets report time series data on 23 American cities for the period 1860-1920. The data, which are present for most but not all of the years in this time span, were drawn from annual reports of police departments, found in the Library of Congress or in newspapers and legislative reports located elsewhere. Variables in the raw data file include arrests for drunkenness, conditional offenses and homicides, persons dismissed or held, police personnel, and population. The second file aggregates by year and reports some of these variables on a per capita basis using a linear interpolation from the last decennial census to estimate population. Data for 267 United States cities for the period 1880-1890 are from the 1880 federal census volume, Report on the Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes, published in 1888, and from the 1890 federal census volume, Social Statistics of Cities. Information includes police personnel and expenditures, arrests, persons held overnight, trains entering town, and population.