SCO Participation Letter

February 1, 2021

Name

Title

Address

Dear <Salutation>:

Thank you for taking part in the update of State Court Organization (SCO). Since the first publication in 1980, SCO has been one of the most widely used practical resources available to members of the state court community, as well as to policymakers, researchers, the media, educators, and the public. SCO is an essential reference guide to key information about how state courts are organized. SCO allows its users to make at-a-glance comparisons across states along key dimensions of court organization. SCO is conducted by the National Center for State Courts, working in conjunction with the Conference of State Court Administrators on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

For the first time, all SCO data collection will be done using an online survey tool. The survey is designed so that questions on a topic are grouped together on a page, with the pages grouped by the categories of judicial branch governance, appellate courts, trial courts, juries, and court technology. We ask that you appoint one person from your staff to be our point of contact throughout the data collection process. This person will coordinate the update of information among members of your staff and will serve as the person to whom we send project-related communications. A special feature of the data collection tool will allow your designated point of contact to delegate portions of the survey to other subject matter experts in your organization and track the progress on completing the survey forms.

We anticipate that it will take approximately 43 hours to complete the SCO data collection. In compliance with the Paper Work Reduction Act, we weighed the resources required to collect these data against the critical information that will be generated with your participation.  This information has been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (please see OMB control number XXX on the data collection forms).

The online survey instrument can be accessed at the following internet link: www.ncsc.org/SCO/yourstatename. We request that all tables be complete by [DEADLINE]. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Shauna Strickland who is the SCO liaison at the National Center for State Courts or Thomas H. Cohen who is the data collection manager at the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Their contact numbers are listed below. I may also be contacted if you have any questions or concerns about this project.

Sincerely,

Duren Banks

Chief, Prosecution and Adjudication Statistics Unit

Bureau of Justice Statistics

(202) 305-1355

Duren.Banks@usdoj.gov

CC:

Thomas H. Cohen

Statistician
Bureau of Justice Statistics
(202) 514-8344
Thomas.H.Cohen@usdoj.gov

Shauna M. Strickland

Senior Court Research Analyst

National Center for State Courts

(757) 259-1511

sstrickland@ncsc.org