Matching Educational and Criminal Records at the Individual Level in Trinidad and Tobago: Methodology and Implementation

This technical note standardizes and merges, at the individual level, several cohorts of academic evaluations undertaken during primary and secondary school in Trinidad and Tobago. In addition, it merges historical criminal records with educational databases. The resulting product is an individual-level panel dataset covering academic and criminal trajectories of citizens of Trinidad and Tobago from 1995 to 2015. This dataset is a powerful tool for evidence-based policymaking that is being used to investigate diverse issues in educational policy. This technical note describes the merging process of these databases, demonstrating the richness and practical usefulness of (sometimes underexploited) administrative records to shape policy decisions.