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Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, 1998

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 1998. Statistics for arrests are included for the first time. Highlights of the 1998 report include the following:

• The number of defendants prosecuted in federal courts rose 12.7 percent--from 69,351 in 1997 to 78,172 in 1998, principally because of increases in drug law prosecutions (38 percent of the increase) and immigration law violations (29 percent of the increase). Most (83 percent) were charged with felony offenses.
• Eighty-seven percent of those charged were convicted. Of those convicted, 94 percent pleaded guilty.
• Seventy-one percent of those convicted were sentenced to prison, up from 60 percent of those convicted in 1990.

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.

Press release (6K)
Full report: Acrobat file (828K) | ASCII file (186K)
Spreadsheets (zip format) (217K)

Chapter 1: Arrests for Federal offenses