U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

State Court Model Statistical Dictionary

NCJ Number
62320
Date Published
July 1980
Annotation
This state court model statistical dictionary contains data terminology for reporting state court caseload statistics, including schemes for classifying court case filings and for displaying the disposition of cases.
Abstract

The scope is confined to court caseload and does not address terminology for the steps in case processing or for court workload other than caseload. The dictionary has been prepared by the staff of the national court statistics project (NCSP) of the national center for state courts, under the close supervision of the NCSP committee of the conference of state court administrators (COSCA). The manuscript was submitted to the full membership of COSCA for review and comments and has been revised accordingly. The dictionary, published by the national criminal justice information and statistics service of LEAA, is a companion document to state court model annual report, published by the national center for state courts. The reporting classification schemes contained in the dictionary are an integral part of the model annual report. The classification schemes include 109 data elements, all defined in the dictionary, along with specific instructions for their usage in court reporting. An additional 50 related terms are defined in order to clarify their usage in the statistical definitions. Another 168 terms are cross-referenced; many of these are caseload terms that can be classified according to the instructions given with the term to which they are cross-referenced. The definitions provided in this dictionary represent an attempt to remove ambiguity from the use of these terms, at least for statistical reporting purposes in state courts. The terms and definitions are offered as models or as preferred terminology and meanings for nationwide comparison purposes. A bibliography and index are included.

Date Published: July 1, 1980