Research

PJI facilitates research that drives evidence-based practices.  Unlike many researchers, we focus on the policy and practice implications of research.  Our work involves baseline data collection and analysis to help you discoverways to improve practice, and thus results.

View Papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences,:

Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology: Examining the Efficacy of Pretrial Release Conditions, Sanctions and Screening with the State Court Processing Statistics Dataseries November 2007

PJI Fact Sheet: Understanding the Findings from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Report, “Pretrial Release of Felony Defendants in State Court - January 2008.

PJI is a member of the National Institute of Corrections’ Pretrial Network.  In May 2007, the National Institute of Corrections partnered with the National Institute of Justice to host a Pretrial Research Roundtable.  The two-day event focused on current research, gaps in research, and field-driven needs for new research in pretrial justice. 

View our Research Agenda to Drive Evidence-Based Practice. (Sept 2007, PowerPoint).

Over the last 30 years, we have administered the State Court Processing Statistics Program, the only adult criminal court data collection effort in the country.  Using this and other data sets, we are researching a number of topics, including the pretrial release rates of Latino defendants, the impact of shaming and morality training on failure to appear rates, and the pretrial release rates of domestic violence defendants. 

SCPS History

In 1988, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), United States Department of Justice established the National Pretrial Reporting Program (NPRP) as an on-going data collection series conducted every two years in 40 jurisdictions (primarily counties, but some independent cities), representing the 75 most populous jurisdictions. These 75 jurisdictions represent approximately half of the nation’s reported crime.  The name was changed to the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program in 1992.

The Pretrial Justice Institute (formerly the Pretrial Services Resource Center) has administered this project on behalf of BJS since the first year of data collection in 1988.  SCPS collects defendant and case-based information and is the only federally sponsored project that collects information covering the pretrial stage, one of the most important in criminal case processing.  SCPS is designed to expand our knowledge of criminal case processing by tracking cases for up to one year from arrest through sentencing, and provides the only national picture of state criminal case processing. 

The significance of pre-adjudication and pre-sentence policies and outcomes cannot be over-emphasized.  They are the product of reconciling the realities of limited resources, the concern of communities to reduce the level of crime, and statutory mandates and guidelines.  To help refine these policies, accurate information about defendants and the criminal justice process must be available to policy makers.  By providing a comprehensive description of decisions and outcomes during the criminal case process, the SCPS data series represents a rich collection of information that can be analyzed to impact policies and practices beneficial to all. PJI has several data analysis projects underway using SCPS data, including an NIJ grant to study the Pretrial Release of Latino Defendants and a BJS study on recidivism using the 2002 SCPS series.  In addition, a number of data analysis grants combining SCPS with other data sets are under consideration with funders.  Check back soon!

View the PowerPoint presentation on our 2006-2008 State Court Processing Statistics Project

 



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