CCSC Electronic Data Extraction Guide

Criminal Cases in State Courts (CCSC)

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Criminal Cases in State Courts

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Criminal Cases in State Courts
(CCSC)
United States Department of Justice
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Electronic Data Extraction Guide

January 2020
Prepared by:
The Urban Institute/National Center for State Courts

Contents
What is the study about? .............................................................................................................................. 2
Who do I contact if I have questions?........................................................................................................... 2
Will the data be secure and kept confidential? ............................................................................................ 3
How do I submit my file(s)? .......................................................................................................................... 4
When is the submission due? ....................................................................................................................... 4
How do I prepare the data for my jurisdiction? ........................................................................................... 4
File Structure ............................................................................................................................................. 4
File Format ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Supporting Documentation ...................................................................................................................... 5
How do I identify eligible cases? ............................................................................................................... 5
What data elements should I include? ..................................................................................................... 6
What if I am unable to provide all the requested data? ............................................................................... 7
What happens after we submit the data? .................................................................................................... 7
Appendix A. Requested Data Elements, Definitions, and Formats............................................................... 8

Criminal Cases in State Courts (CCSC) Electronic Data
Extraction Guide
What is the study about?
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has initiated a data collection of
case-level data on felony and misdemeanor cases in state criminal courts across the United States with
the goal of developing nationally representative state court statistics. BJS previously maintained two
reporting programs—the National Judicial Reporting Program (NJRP), last completed in 2006, and the
State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS), last completed in 2009—to collect and analyze case-level data
from criminal courts. The Criminal Cases in State Courts (CCSC) leverages current advances in court data
systems and standards to update the reporting on state court activity. The CCSC sample will be drawn
from all felony and misdemeanor cases disposed in state criminal courts in 2019. This information is
critical to understanding the number and types of cases processed in state criminal courts nationwide,
along with other characteristics of these cases and the associated defendants.
BJS anticipates that the CCSC will inform 1) the field of court administration of current practice and
trends in criminal case processing and 2) the public of how criminal cases are handled in the United
States. Findings from the CCSC will be reported in aggregate form, precluding the possibility of revealing
the identity of individual defendants or jurisdictions, and any identifying information will be removed or
anonymized before archiving the data for research purposes. The CCSC can also serve as a benchmark to
state court administrators and policymakers who wish to compare their own data to these national
estimates. In other words, states and counties could better understand their own level of criminal
justice activity in a broad, national context.
The Urban Institute (Urban) and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) will collect these data on
behalf of BJS. The ability to collect data electronically from automated information systems depends on
each jurisdiction’s capacity to extract the necessary data from their data management system. BJS,
Urban and NCSC recognize this variation in state court systems and have developed this data extraction
guide to support all modes of data collection. This data extraction guide will (1) describe the secure
electronic data submission process and (2) provide a set of reporting instructions and standards for
jurisdictions that have the capacity to extract data in electronic format. Appendix A includes a list of the
data elements we seek to collect along with their definitions, preferred formats, and example values.

Who do I contact if I have questions?
An CCSC research team member from Urban or NCSC will contact your jurisdiction by email to initiate
and facilitate a data request. For questions about extracting or submitting data, please reach out to this
original Urban or NCSC point of contact or:
CCSC Help Desk
Toll Free: 855-279-3515
Email: CCSC@urban.org
Mail: 500 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, D.C. 20024

For general questions about the CCSC study:
Suzanne Strong
Statistician and CCSC Project Manager
Bureau of Justice Statistics
810 Seventh St., NW
Washington, DC 20531
202-616-3666

Will the data be secure and kept confidential?
Consistent with its statutory obligations (34 U.S.C. § 10134), BJS only uses information collected under
its authority for statistical or research purposes. Further, BJS is required by law to protect the
confidentiality of all personally identifiable information it collects or acquires in conjunction with BJSfunded projects (34 U.S.C. § 10231), and must maintain the appropriate administrative, physical, and
technical safeguards to protect the identifiable information against improper use or unauthorized
disclosure. BJS will not use or reveal data identifiable to a private person, except as authorized under 28
CFR § 22.21 and § 22.22. The BJS Data Protection Guidelines summarize the federal laws, regulations,
and other authorities that govern information acquired under BJS’s authority, and are published on the
BJS website: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/BJS_Data_Protection_Guidelines.pdf. Urban and NCSC are
required to adhere to these same requirements as a condition of funding. Any data collected as part of
the CCSC cannot and will not be used in any enforcement actions or administrative procedures to limit
access to a program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance (Title VI
of the Civil Rights Act).
BJS only publishes de-identified data at the aggregate level in its project findings, reports, data files, and
other statistical products. BJS archives its published data and related data documentation (e.g., user
guides) at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), located at the University of Michigan.
To the extent practical, BJS removes, masks, or collapses direct and indirect identifiers prior to sending
data to NACJD to protect confidentiality. NACJD takes additional precautions to protect confidentiality,
including conducting a comprehensive disclosure risk review to determine the appropriate level of
security that should be applied to the data. For more information on data requiring additional security
protections, please see: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/NACJD/restricted.html.
Urban and NCSC project staff will receive data sets from contributing agencies through a Secure File
Transfer Protocol (SFTP) set up by Urban’s Technology and Data Science team. Personally-identifiable
information is encrypted while in transit, and once a dataset is received it will be transferred to a secure
encrypted drive. Access to the data will be limited to those employees who have a need for such data
and have signed a confidentiality pledge. The confidentiality pledge includes an agreement to comply
with all data security and human subjects' protection requirements. Any data set(s) electronically
transmitted to BJS will be over the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) secure transfer site.
We understand that your agency may have preexisting policies in place around data sharing, and we will
work with your agency to meet any data transfer or agreement requirements you may have. While each
of the identified data elements were selected to fully understand the processing of cases disposed in
state criminal courts, we recognize that not all data elements may be collected or readily available
electronically for public use. Please notify us if you limit the amount or type of data you can release.
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How do I submit my file(s)?
You can use Urban’s SFTP to transfer your agency’s data. Urban will provide you with a username and
password to log in to the project’s website and deposit the electronic data. You may deposit as many
files as necessary and in any format. For example, your jurisdiction may want to deposit several files that
must be linked to get complete case data, as well as a Word document that provides the record layout
for the files and linking instructions. Additional files, as necessary, may be submitted by your jurisdiction
and separately tracked.
An Urban research team member will contact your jurisdiction to initiate and facilitate the data
submission process. If needed, the Urban research team will provide guidance and assistance with
regard to uploading data via the SFTP. If your jurisdiction requires an alternative means of submission,
Urban will work with you to find the most convenient secure method for you to submit your data.
Please do not transfer data over non-secure mechanisms, such as unencrypted file transfer over the
internet or unencrypted email.

When is the submission due?
The target date is XXXX, but we understand that may not be possible for every agency. Please contact us
and we will work with you to set a realistic target date.

How do I prepare the data for my jurisdiction?
This section provides guidance on reporting specifications, including file structure, supporting
documentation, case identification and selection, and variable and value definitions.
There is no required format for the data you submit; use whatever is most convenient for you. The
suggested coding classifications and value labels – developed to be consistent with NCSC’s draft National
Open Court Data Standards (NODS) – are provided in Appendix A to assist with data submission. Your
project point of contact will also provide technical assistance, including guidance in interpreting the data
request. We recognize that the participating courts are unique and have different data systems with
different levels of detail and data sharing capabilities. Rather than placing the burden on the data
contributor to submit data in this uniform format, we will accept any data that each jurisdiction can
provide and in turn will process it into a standard format that can be used to produce the national
estimates.
To do this effectively, NCSC and Urban Institute will study and compare the submitted data to the
extract guideline specifications to determine if they require any restructuring. For each submission,
NCSC and Urban Institute will communicate with contributing jurisdictions to clarify any questions raised
during the review. For files that require substantial restructuring, Urban Institute and NCSC staff will
consult with jurisdiction personnel to obtain file documentation that will enhance understanding of the
data. During this process, NCSC and Urban Institute will be in close communication with the jurisdiction
to ensure that the data are processed and interpreted correctly.

File Structure
Both case- and event-level data is requested. You can provide data in any format that is convenient for
you; please provide supporting documentation to ensure that we interpret the data properly.
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One way to structure data is to provide one file at the case level and multiple event-level files with
clearly established relationships between the appropriate fields and records of source tables and the
targeted output layout. Using this format, the case level file would include one record for each disposed
case. If there are multiple charges, they would all appear in the same record. Event-level files could
include more than one record for each event in the case (e.g. separate records for each attorney
assignment or court hearing). Case or docket numbers (with defendant identifiers, if applicable) should
be included in each file to allow for record linking.

File Format
The preferred electronic file formats include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Text files (fixed width, delimited);
Excel (or .csv) files;
Stata data files;
SAS data files;
R data files;
SPSS data files;
Access database; or
SQL server database.

Supporting Documentation
Please provide some tracking information and relevant documentation for your data submission,
including:
•
•
•
•

•

Date of submission
Primary point of contact: name, organization, position, address, telephone, and e-mail address
File format and format version (e.g., SQL server DB, Access DB, text files (fixed width, delimited),
Excel, etc.)
Known data quality problems or limitations
o Missing data:
 System-missing (data element not available in system)
 Unit-missing (large % of missing values for a particular data element)
o Common data errors, system-wide or with specific elements (e.g. misspellings,
redundancy, duplication, contradictory values)
Data formatting information:
o Diagrams, data dictionaries, and/or field descriptions where available
o Documentation of variables that diverge from the definitions provided in Appendix A
o Any lookup table(s) that helps to translate data values
o Graphical representation of the physical data source to show underlying database
architecture that would inform the restructuring of data files
o Information on the level at which data is provided for each table (e.g., case-level, eventlevel)

How do I identify eligible cases?
The data provided should include all felony and misdemeanor cases disposed in state criminal courts of
general and limited jurisdiction, excluding municipal courts, in 2019. Case dispositions may be entered
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as nolle prosequi, guilty finding or verdict, dismissal, or acquittal, among others (e.g. directed verdict,
incompetent to stand trial). Cases disposed in 2019 but not sentenced should be included. Please
exclude from the data file all cases still pending a final decision from a judicial officer (e.g., those in
which there is not a disposition for the original charge(s)). For appeals, include all cases appealed from a
limited jurisdiction court to a general jurisdiction court if there is a final disposition in the general
jurisdiction court. Do not include any cases that are remanded, unless the remand includes a final
disposition in either a limited or general jurisdiction court. Exclude any violations of probation or parole
hearings or cases.
The data file should include the following case types:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Felonies;
Misdemeanors;
Criminal traffic;
Appeals or transfers from limited jurisdiction courts to general jurisdiction courts;
Transfers from other jurisdictions; and
Juvenile court cases transferred to adult court.

The data file should exclude the following types of cases if possible. If it would be too difficult to remove
these cases, please note this in your submission.
•
•
•
•
•
•

Cases disposed in municipal courts, unless it would be too difficult to remove these cases;
Civil traffic;
Appellate court cases;
Juvenile court cases (except if a juvenile is tried by the adult court);
Cases in which a defendant was diverted but has not yet completed the diversion program; and
Violations of probation or parole.

BJS defines a criminal case as a set of all charges against a single defendant arising out of one incident.
An incident with a continuing course of conduct (e.g., sexual assaults against one victim over time; thefts
committed by one defendant multiple times) meets this definition. If your definition of a case differs
from this (e.g., single citation per case, multiple defendants per case), please call your project point of
contact or the CCSC Help Line at 855-279-3515 and note this in your submission. A case should include
all charges under the same case number; if multiple charges were disposed at different points in time,
then select cases where the most serious charge was disposed in 2019.

What data elements should I include?
Urban and NCSC are requesting data elements pertaining to multiple points throughout the life of a
case. Appendix A lists the data elements we are requesting and their definitions, which are consistent
with the draft NCSC NODS. Preferred formats and example values for each data element are also
provided in Appendix A. Please note that preferred formats and example values are optional; please
provide data in the format most convenient for you along with appropriate documentation of data
structure and values.
We plan to collect data elements from the following categories:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

General case information;
Defendant information;
Charge information;
Sentencing information;
Hearing information;
Attorney information;
Pretrial release information;
Diversion and problem solving court information; and
Warrant information.

What if I am unable to provide all the requested data?
If your agency does not collect one or more data elements, or providing them would be too burdensome
or is prohibited under agency policy, then exclude those data elements from your data submission. If
you are unable to provide many of the elements, please reach out to your point of contact or the CCSC
Help Desk at 855-279-3515.

What happens after we submit the data?
Urban and NCSC will verify the contents of the data file. We may reach out to clarify or confirm any
questions about variable formats or values. Typically, this will be within 2-3 weeks of your submission.
Urban or NCSC will contact you to review any questions. Having a thorough understanding of your data
is vital to constructing a valid CCSC dataset and ensuring that we are properly interpreting and using
your data.

Appendix A. Requested Data Elements, Definitions, and Formats
Category

Data Element
Jurisdiction identifier
Court level

General Case
Information

Court case identifier

Initiating action
Defendant identifier
Age at arrest

Definition
County name; district name; circuit name
Level of court.
Anonymized series of characters that identify
the court case that follows a case through court
levels. This identifier should be assigned to each
charge within the same case.
Type of action that initiated the case.
Anonymized series of characters that identify
the same individual within the court system,
across cases and courts within the state.
Individual’s age as of arrest/offense date. If age
is not available, please provide date of birth.

Format
String
String

Example Values
County name; district name; circuit name
District; circuit

Numeric
or string
Numeric
or
String

1=Summons; 2=Arrest; 3=Warrant;
4=Warrantless arrest; 5=Indictment

Numeric
or string
Numeric

Gender or sex

Individual's gender.

Numeric
or
String

1 = Male; 2 = Female

Ethnicity

Individual’s ethnicity determines whether a
person is of Hispanic origin or not.

1=Spanish/Hispanic/Latino; 0=Not
Spanish/Hispanic/Latino

Race

Individual’s self-identification with one or more
racial groups. NOTE: Self-identification is much
preferred, but in its absence, the perception of
race by the criminal justice officer(s) who had
the first contact with the defendant can serve as
a proxy.

Numeric
or
String
Numeric
or
String

1=White; 2=African American; 3=American
Indian or Alaskan; 4=Asian 5=Pacific Islander or
Native Hawaiian; 5=Other 6=Two or more races

Defendant indigency
status

Indicator of whether individual was determined
to be indigent at any point during the case.

Attorney type

Type of counsel at disposition/sentencing.

Defendant
Information

Numeric
or
String
Numeric
or
String

1=Yes; 0=No
1 = private/retained; 2=public defender;
3=assigned/appointed; 4=no counsel/pro se

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