Concept: Involvement Type Indicator - Justice System

Introduction

This concept contains information about an indicator that was developed to provide information about involvement with the Justice system. The indicator is derived from the Justice Prosecution Information and Scheduling Management (PRISM) data available in the MCHP Data Repository. The Involvement Type indicator is a categorical variable that indicates how someone is involved (e.g.: as the accused, victim, or witness) in an incident or charge recorded in the PRISM data.

This concept includes information on the data source(s) for this indicator, background information on how the indicator has evolved over time, a description of the methods used to develop the indicator, a SAS Code Format example, cautions / limitations about using this indicator, and a description of the SAS macro that can be used to identify the categories of involvement type in the Justice data.

Data Sources

The Justice Involvement Type indicator is derived from values in the variable named INVOLVEMENT_TYPE_CODE in the Prosecution Information and Scheduling Management (PRISM) data. The variable is available in both the Incidents and Charges datasets/files.

The INVOLVEMENT_TYPE_CODE variable contains many different values, depending on the type of involvement being recorded. Three of the most frequent values appearing in the data, along with their description include:


• 'ACC' - Accused
  
• 'VIC' - Victim
  
• 'WIT' - Witness

Background Information

Over time, the Justice Involvement Type Indicator has evolved. Several MCHP research projects have reported on involvement with the justice system.


• Data Analyst Meeting Presentation - July 8, 2015 - introduced us to the Justice PRISM data and discussed involvement type - see the LINKS section below for access to the PowerPoint slides (internal access only) presented and discussed at this meeting.
  
• In The Mental Health of Manitoba's Children (2016) and the Mental Illness Among Adult Manitobans (2018) deliverables, involvement with the justice system included two categories: accused and victim.
  
• In A Comparison of Models of Primary Care Delivery in Winnipeg Deliverable (2016), involvement with the justice system was examined as part of social complexities , and included three categories; witness, victim and accused.
  
• In The PAX Program in Manitoba: A Population-Based Analysis of Children's Outcomes Deliverable (2018), involvement with the justice system was used as a control variable, and included two indicators:
  
  • maternal justice involvement - as an accused, victim, witness or eye witness; or
    
  • child justice involvement - as a victim, witness or eye witness
• In The Health Status of Community-Dwelling Older Adults in Manitoba Deliverable (2019), they used the PRISM data to determine the percentage of the older adult population who were victims of a crime.

Note: In some of the earliest research projects, the indicator only included one related code value for each category.


• In The Overlap Between the Child Welfare and Youth Criminal Justice Systems: Documenting "Cross-Over Kids" in Manitoba Deliverable by Brownell et al. (2020), they developed a more inclusive method of categorizing involvement with the justice system by broadening the scope of values in the INVOLVEMENT_TYPE_CODE variable in each category. This method is described below.

Methods - Categories of Involvement in the Justice System

In The Overlap Between the Child Welfare and Youth Criminal Justice Systems: Documenting "Cross-Over Kids" in Manitoba Deliverable by Brownell et al. (2020), they investigated youth (age 12-17) involvement in the justice system, and came up with five categories:


1. Accused - youth who were accused of a crime. For most analyses in the 2020 report, youth whose only charge was for Highway Traffic Act or regulatory offenses (e.g. trespassing on school property, fishing without a license) were excluded, since most people would not consider these offenses "criminal".
   
2. Victim - youth with an incident in which they were identified as a victim of a crime.
   
3. Witness - youth with an incident in which they were identified as a witness to a crime.
   
4. Any youth justice involvement - youth with any incidents in which they were accused of, a victim of, or a witness to a crime.
   
5. Never involved with youth justice - youth who were never involved in any incidents in which they were accused of, a victim of, or a witness to a crime.

There are multiple codes recorded in the data that can be included in each of the Accused, Victim or Witness categories. Additional code values available in the data identify other types of involvement, but they are not included in the Accused, Victim or Witness categories. For more information on all the code values available in the data, please see the PRISM Data Dictionary that is available in the MCHP Metadata Repository (internal access only).

The specific code values, and descriptions, that are included in each of the Accused, Victim or Witness categories are:

1 - ACCUSED


• 'ACC' - Accused
  
• 'CAU' - Cautioned/Warned
  
• 'COACC' – Co-Accused
  
• 'CRO' – Crown Opinion
  
• 'CROCAU' – Crown Caution
  
• 'NCL' – No Charges Laid
  
• 'OTH2' - Intoxicated Persons Detention Act (IPDA)
  
• 'WRT' - Warrant
  
• 'YCA' – Cautioned (Youth Criminal Justice Act - YCJA)
  
• 'YCP' – Refer to a Community program (YCJA)
  
• 'YNA' – No Action Taken (YCJA)
  
• 'YWR' – Warned (YCJA)

2 - VICTIM

• 'COM' - Complainant
  
• 'OTH1' – Protected Person
  
• 'VIC' - Victim
  
• 'VIC/DEC' – Deceased Victim

3 - WITNESS

• 'EYEWIT' – Eye Witness
  
• 'MATWIT' – Material Witness
  
• 'WIT' - Witness

SAS Code Format Example

proc format;
value $mj_prism_involvement_type_cat

'ACC',
'CAU',
'COACC',
'CRO',
'CROCAU',
'NCL',
'OTH2',
'WRT',
'YCA', 'YCP', 'YNA', 'YWR' = 'ACCUSED'

'COM',
'OTH1',
'VIC',
'VIC/DEC' = 'VICTIM'

'EYEWIT',
'MATWIT',
'WIT' = 'WITNESS';

run;

data incidents;
set justice.mj_prism_incidents_2002sep_new;

involvement_type = put(involvement_type_code,$mj_prism_involvement_type_cat.);

run;

Cautions / Limitations

• When running this code using the INCIDENTS file, the SAS code will return values for accused, victim and witness.
  
• When using this code with the CHARGES file, only a value for accused will be returned, based on the code values recorded in the INVOLVEMENT_TYPE_CODE variable.

SAS Macro - Justice Involvement

This macro takes as input a cohort of SCRPHINs and assigns an involvement type (Accused, Witness, Victim, Other) from the Incidents dataset.

NOTE:

• limit the accused to age 12 and over. Do not limit the age of the other involvement types, as younger people may be victims or witnesses.
  
• the four categories above are split into further subdivisions, such as Eyewitness and Material Witness.
  
• A person may have more than one type of involvement in a given incident, so the same person may show up multiple times. This also means your output dataset will have more records than your input cohort.

** Macro to assign an involvement_type (i.e. ACCUSED, VICTIM, WITNESS or OTHER) to each scrambled PHIN in the INCIDENT dataset **;

%_justice_involvement (cohort = , acqset_year = , justice_output = justice_involvement);

cohort = This dataset contains the PHINs of interest. NOTE: the phin must be named scrphin.
acqset_year = The acqset year of interest using the justice.mj_prism_mhcw_2002sep_new dataset.
keep_cw = list of additional variables specific to the link dataset to keep.
keep_incid = list of additional variables specific in the incident dataset to keep.
justice_output = The name of the final justice_output dataset - default is justice_involvement.

Default list of "keep" vars: scrphin individual_id involvement_type_code involvement_type_cat incident_ID incident_create_dttm incident_from_dt incident_to_dt police_incident_type police_agency prism_recnmbr orig_charges