Social order in Middletown, 1932-1975

Muncie, Indiana which has more commonly been referred to as "Middletown" in social science studies, is the location for this data collection. The purpose of this study was to examine crime over a period of 43 years. The data were collected from official records of the criminal courts in Muncie and Delaware County, Indiana. The unit of analysis is the criminal act charged. All charges were counted and appropriately categorized. The following rules were observed for cases involving multiple charges or multiple counts of single charges. First, each charge was counted separately when multiple charges were filed. Second, when a defendant was charged with multiple counts of a single charge, each count was considered to be a separate act and so recorded. Variables in this dataset include year of criminal act charge, first, second, and third offenses charged, amount of bail, length of prison term, sex, age, and race of the alleged defendant.