State Court Processing Statistics Program

Originally conceived by the Pretrial Justice Institute in 1982, State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) today is the nation’s leading resource for data on the criminal justice processing of felony defendants in 40 jurisdictions representative of 75 large urban counties. For the past 25 years, the Pretrial Justice Institute has spearheaded this program for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, collecting data from multiple agencies in each jurisdiction to provide a snapshot of defendants, their demographic characteristics and records, as well as their pretrial outcomes.

SCPS began in 1983 as the first data-collection project of its kind, processing information from three counties. It quickly expanded to include 17 counties and eventually became the ongoing national program known as the National Pretrial Reporting Project.  Though the name changed in the course of the program’s growth, the objectives and design of SCPS has remained rooted in the Pretrial Justice Institute’s original vision of building a comprehensive source of information about felony defendants and their case processing.