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Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, 1997

Presents national-level statistics describing all aspects of processing in the Federal criminal justice system, including investigations by U.S. attorneys, prosecutions and declinations, pretrial release and detention, convictions and acquittals, sentencing, appeals, and corrections for 1997. Highlights of the 1997 report include the following:

• During 1997 U.S. attorneys initiated criminal investigations of 110,034 suspects. They concluded investigations of 99,459 suspects.
• Criminal charges were filed in U.S. district courts against 69,351 defendants during 1997. Criminal cases were concluded against 64,956 defendants during 1997. Eighty-seven percent (or 56,570) of all defendants were convicted. Most felony convictions were obtained by guilty plea (93%).
• Drug defendants comprised 42% of felony convictions, defendants charged with property and public-order offenses each comprised 26% of the felony convictions, and defendants charged with violent offenses comprised the remaining 6% of felony convictions.

10/99, NCJ 176328 This report is one in a series. More recent editions may be available. A list of all in the series is provided on the publications page.

Full report: Acrobat file (827K) | Ascii file (no tables) ( 172K)

Introduction Acrobat file (142K)
Chapter 1: Prosecution Acrobat file (129K) | Zipped archive of 6 spreadsheets (18K)
Chapter 2: Pretrial release Acrobat file (171K)| Zipped archive of 10 spreadsheets (35K)
Chapter 3: Adjudication Acrobat file (129K) | Zipped archive of 5 spreadsheets (35K)
Chapter 4: Sentencing Acrobat file (134K) | Zipped archive of 6 spreadsheets (22K)
Chapter 5: Appeals Acrobat file (120K) | Zipped archive of 5 spreadsheets (19K)
Chapter 6: Corrections Acrobat file (237K) | Zipped archive of 16 spreadsheets (63K)
Methodology Acrobat file (165K)

About the source data | Codebooks & data sets |

Interactive tabulations of Federal criminal case processing data are available from the Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center.

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