2023 Virginia Pretrial Data Project

For the 2025 study, individuals with pretrial contact events during Calendar Year (CY) 2023. A contact event is the point at which an individual comes into contact with the criminal justice system and he or she is charged with a criminal offense, thus beginning the pretrial process. As in previous years, for individuals with more than one contact event during the calendar year, only the first event was selected; however, the defendant’s first contact event in a calendar year was excluded if it was identified as a pretrial outcome for an event that occurred during the previous calendar year. Individuals were tracked for a minimum of 15 months, until the disposition of the case or the end of the follow-up period, whichever occurred first. The Sentencing Commission adhered to the previously-established data collection methods. Data for the Project was obtained from seven different data systems. Compiling the data into a unified dataset requires numerous iterations of matching, merging and data cleaning to ensure accuracy when linking information from the respective data systems to each defendant in the cohort. More than 500 data elements were captured for each defendant, including demographics, charging details, criminal history records, pretrial release status, bond type and amount, court appearance by the defendant, new criminal arrest during the pretrial period, and final dispositions.

Click below to download the publicly available datasets (154MB).

• 2023 First Quarter Dataset
• 2023 Second Quarter Dataset
• 2023 Third Quarter Dataset
• 2023 Fourth Quarter Dataset

   

For Pretrial Data Project 2023, the variable Defendant_IndigencyStatus is no longer included in the published data. Derived from defendant’s attorney type at the case closure, this variable was previously used as a proxy measure of indigency in the Pretrial Data Project from 2018 to 2022. When a defendant was represented by either a public defender or a court-appointed attorney, the indigency proxy was calculated as 1, and vice versa.

If you are having trouble downloading a dataset, please email jody.fridley@vcsc.virginia.gov or call Sentencing Commission staff at 804.225.4398.