Federal Justice Statistics Program: Defendants in Federal Criminal Cases Filed in District Court, 2008 [United States]

The data contain records of defendants in criminal cases filed in United States District Court during fiscal year 2008. The data were constructed from the Administrative Office of the United States District Courts' (AOUSC) criminal file. Defendants in criminal cases may be either individuals or corporations. There is one record for each defendant in each case filed. Included in the records are data from court proceedings and offense codes for up to five offenses charged at the time the case was filed. (The most serious charge at termination may differ from the most serious charge at case filing, due to plea bargaining or action of the judge or jury.) In a case with multiple charges against the defendant, a "most serious" offense charge is determined by a hierarchy of offenses based on statutory maximum penalties associated with the charges. The data file contains variables from the original AOUSC files as well as additional analysis variables, or "SAF variables," that denote subsets of the data. These SAF variables are related to statistics reported in the Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, Tables 4.1-4.5 and 5.1-5.6. Variables containing information (e.g., name, Social Security number) were replaced with blanks, and the day portions of date fields were also sanitized in order to protect the identities of individuals. These data are part of a series designed by the Urban Institute (Washington, DC) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Data and documentation were prepared by the Urban Institute.

本数据集包含2008财年美国地区法院受理的刑事案件被告记录。数据来源于美国地区法院行政办公室（AOUSC）的刑事档案。刑事案件被告可为个人或法人实体。每起受理案件中的每位被告对应一条记录。记录中包含法庭诉讼数据，以及案件受理时被控的至多五项罪名的罪名代码（offense codes）。（由于辩诉交易或法官/陪审团的裁决，案件终结时的最严重指控可能与受理时不同。）若被告面临多项指控，“最严重”罪名由基于各指控法定最高刑罚的罪名层级体系确定。数据文件包含原始AOUSC文件中的变量，以及表示数据子集的附加分析变量（又称“SAF变量”）。这些SAF变量与《联邦司法统计纲要》表4.1-4.5及表5.1-5.6中报告的统计数据相关。包含个人信息（如姓名、社会保障号码）的变量已被替换为空白值，日期字段的日部分也经过脱敏处理，以保护个人身份。本数据是华盛顿特区城市研究所（Urban Institute）与司法统计局联合设计的系列数据之一。数据及文档由城市研究所编制。