State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS)

Pretrial release refers to the conditions of release from custody to which defendants must adhere during the time period between the filing of charges by law enforcement and court adjudication. After arrest charges are filed, the courts will decide whether a defendant can be released pending trial and other court proceedings. If a defendant is released pretrial, the courts may issue stipulations on that release that fall along a spectrum of least to most restrictive, often driven by the severity of the charges filed and the defendant’s prior criminal history.

BJS has sponsored periodic data collections on criminal trial and appellate litigation in state courts since 1986. BJS’s current collection is Criminal Cases in State Courts (CCSC), an effort to examine data on the processing of felony cases in state courts of general jurisdiction.