Courts.

Federal Criminal Case Processing, 2002: With Trends 1982-2002, Reconciled Data describes the case processing of defendants in the federal criminal justice system. The report includes the number and disposition of suspects investigated by U.S. attorneys, the number of arrests for federal offenses, the number of defendants in cases filed in U.S. district courts, sanctions imposed on criminal defendants, the number of persons under federal correctional supervision (probation, parole, supervised release, and incarceration), and trends in annual federal criminal case processing. Highlights feature the following: between 1994 and 2002, investigations initiated by U.S. attorneys have increased 25 percent (from 99,251 to 124,335), including a rise in investigations for both immigration violations (from 5,526 to 16,699) and drug offenses (from 29,311 to 38,150); during 2002, criminal cases involving 80,424 defendants were concluded in U.S. district court, and not only were 89 percent of the individuals convicted but 96 percent of those convicted pleaded guilty or no contest; and U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute a smaller proportion of those investigated, as declinations of matters concluded decreased from 36 percent during 1994 to 27 percent during 2002. This report is available online at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/fccp02.htm.