Subject: Urban Felony Defendants

           FELONY DEFENDANTS IN LARGE URBAN COUNTIES, 1988
 
 
This report describes the processing of cases for persons arrested for
a felony in the nation's 75 largest counties during February 1988.
Numerical tables present data on the pretrial, adjudication, and
sentencing phases of the criminal justice process.
 
     Highlights from the report include the following:
 
- About two-thirds of the defendants were under age 30, and a third of
the murder and robbery defendants were under age 21.
 
- Two-thirds of the defendants were known to have been arrested
previously, and half were known to have at least one prior conviction.
 
- During the 1-year study period, two-thirds of the defendants were
released from custody before the disposition of their case.  The
percentage released pretrial ranged from 39% for murder defendants to
86% for those charged with driving-related felonies.
 
- About 4% of all defendants were held without bail, including 26% of
murder defendants.
 
- Defendants with no prior convictions were relased in 77% of the
cases, compared to 46% of those with a prior conviction for a violent
felony.
 
- About half of the defendants who were released pretrial were
released within 1 day of their arrest.
 
- About three-fourths of all released defendants made all scheduled
court appearances, but a third of those who did not were still
fugitives at the end of the 1-year period.
 
- Of the cases disposed of, about 70% resulted in a conviction.
Three-fourths of these convictions were for a felony.
 
- Two-thirds of the defendants convicted of a felony received an
incarceration sentence.
 
- Defendants convicted of a fleony were more likely to receive a
prison sentence if they had a prior felony conviction.
 
BJS initiated the National Pretrial Reporting Program in 1988.  Data
on 11,000 felony cases were collected from local courts in 39 urban
counties, part of a sample scientifically designed to represent the
Nation's 75 most populous counties.  In 1985, these counties accounted
for nearly half of all reported crimes in the United States.  This
data set is available on tape from the National Archive of Criminal
Justice Data, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI  48106 (1-800-999-0960).
 
Copies of this bulletin as well as other BJS publications may be
obtained from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS),
Box 6000, Rockville, MD  20850 (order number NCJ 122385).  The
telephone number is 1-301-251-5500.  The toll-free number from places
other than Maryland and metropolitan Washington, D.C., is
1-800-732-3277.
 
Public affairs contact:  Stu Smith, 202-724-7782 or after hours
301-983-9354.