NCJ Number
125315
Date Published
1990
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This paper describes the processing and disposition during 1987 of felony arrests arising from 621,625 incidents.
Abstract
Of the more than 536,000 persons arrested in the seven States that reported on the whole process beginning at arrest, 81 percent were prosecuted, 60 percent were convicted of a felony or misdemeanor, and 40 percent received a sentence to a State prison or a local jail. These findings are from data voluntarily submitted to the Offender Based Transaction Statistics program of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Other findings from analysis of these felony arrests include the following: (1) Of the 520,925 prosecutions, almost one in four resulted in a court dismissal, and slightly less than three in four ended in conviction; 1 percent of the prosecutions resulted in acquittal, and 3 percent resulted in other nonconvictional dispositions; (2) More than 6 in 10 of those convicted received a sentence to a State prison or local jail; (3) Most persons arrested for all types of felonies were male, white, and under age 30; and (4) The median time between arrest for a felony and a decision by a court was 3.5 months, and about 90 percent of all felony arrests were processed by the criminal justice system within 1 year. Tables, figures, notes, appendix