Legal Terms

Arraignment: An arraignment is usually the first court data in a criminal case. At arraignment, a defendant finds out what they are charged with and what rights they have. If they cannot afford an attorney, the judge can appoint one for them.

Arrest: Law enforcement takes an individual into legal custody in response to the suspicion of an individual’s violation of the law. Law enforcement uses the standard of “probable cause” to determine whether an individual should be arrested, given information provided by witnesses or other evidence.

Bail or bond: The amount of money set by the court for the release of a person accused of a crime. It is designed to assure the person's presence for trial and may contain additional non-monetary conditions of release.

Beyond a reasonable doubt: the legal burden of proof required to convict a defendant in a criminal case at trial. The prosecution bears the burden of proving that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt – in other words, that there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented.

Case: A case is a collection of all charges against a defendant arising out of a single incident. In this dashboard, cases are classified by their most serious charge (the crime that a defendant is accused of committing).

Crime: An act prohibited by statute.

Continuance: Action by the Court to grant a delay to the proceedings until a later date.

Conviction: The outcome of criminal case when a defendant is determined to be guilty of a crime.

Defendant: The person against whom a criminal case is pending.

Filing a case: Prosecutors review arrest reports/referrals for each case referred by law enforcement. If the prosecutor determines the evidence supports a good faith belief in conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, the case is filed and continues until resolution.

Disposition: The resolution of a case, which may include dismissal, diversion, acquital, or a conviction through guilty plea or trial.

In custody: When an individual is being detained by law enforcement, the court, or another legal entity and is not free to leave.

Plea agreement: an agreement between the prosecution and the defendant defining the specific conditions and crimes to which a defendant chooses to plead guilty.

Pretrial detention: Defendants who are detained pretrial are incarcerated in jail prior to resolution of the case.

Probable cause: Evidentiary reason for arrest or to obtain a warrant. A reasonable basis for believing that a crime has been committed.

Referred: A case is referred when it is submitted to the District Attorney’s Office for review by law enforcement. This includes investigations, arrests, warrants, notices to appear, citations, and other requests for prosecution.

Victim: A victim is a person who has suffered direct or threatened physical psychological, or financial harm as a result of the commission or attempted commission of a crime.

Charge Levels

Felony: Felonies are the most serious criminal violations of California state laws, and include crimes such murder, rape, robbery, and burglary. In California, any crime that can result in a sentence of one year or more is considered a felony crime. Sentences following conviction for a felony may include fines, probation, jail, and prison.

Misdemeanor: Misdemeanors are less serious criminal violations of California state laws, punishable by a sentence of up to 364 days in county jail and a fine of not more than $1,000. A misdemeanor is more serious than an infraction but less serious than a felony. A person convicted of a misdemeanor cannot be sentenced to state prison, unless the misdemeanor sentence is served simultaneously (concurrently) with a felony sentence. Misdemeanors cover a wide range of offenses, including alcohol-related traffic offenses (such as DUI), simple assault, or shoplifting less than $950.

Infractions: Infractions are the least serious criminal violations of California state laws. Examples of petty offenses are littering, fishing without a license, or drinking alcohol in public. Most infractions are written on a "ticket" form, but infractions can also be filed by the prosecutor on a "complaint" document. An infraction is usually punishable by a fine and if the fine is paid, there is no jail time.

Charge Types

Person: Includes crimes that involve physical harm to a person, such as homicide, rape, sex offenses, assault, domestic violence, child abuse, kidnapping, human trafficking, false imprisonment, stalking, neglect, or robbery.

Property: Includes crimes that involve harm to property or are financial in nature, such as burglary, car theft, hit and run, and many theft related crimes.

Drug: Includes crimes that involve controlled substances, such as all crimes related to possession, possession for sale, and sale of illegal drugs.

DUI/Vehicle: Includes crimes that involve driving under the influence, hit and run, and other vehicle-related crimes.

Other: Includes all other crimes, such as identify theft, some protective order crimes, some crimes against children, and all other offenses.

Vehicle: Includes crimes that involve the operation of a motor vehicle, such as careless driving, driver’s license violations, driving without insurance, leaving the scene of an accident, reckless driving, and other vehicle/traffic charges.

Violent: Includes crimes that involve physical harm to a person, such as murder, attempted murder, assaults, many domestic violence crimes, and many sexual assault related crimes.

Weapon: Includes crimes that involve the possession or use of a weapon, such as possession of a weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, or other weapons charges.

Public Order/Other: Includes all other crimes, such as contributing to the delinquency of a minor, bribery or tampering, retaliation against judge/prosecutor, disorderly conduct, false report/emergency, escape, or violations of an order of protection.

Dispositions

Dismissed: A case is dismissed when all the criminal charges in the case are terminated after the case is filed, either by the court or by the prosecutor. There can be several reasons for why a case is dismissed, including: a lack of evidence or unavailability of a witness or as part of a plea agreement. This category also includes cases that are referred to diversion and successfully complete diversion programming.

Diversion: Diversion is an alternative solution that can take many forms, but it usually involves a suspension of formal criminal proceedings against a defendant, where after completion of certain conditions (such as treatment that addresses the underlying causes of criminal behavior), the defendant has their charges dismissed.

Plead Guilty: A defendant pleads guilty when they admit a factual basis for the plea and acknowledges guilt for a charge, sometimes in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

Found Guilty: A defendant is found guilty when found guilty at trial of any charge.

Acquitted: A case is acquitted when a judge or jury at trial determines that the defendant is not guilty of the crime for which the individual has been charged.

Sentences

Prison: A sentence to state prison.

Jail: A sentence to local incarceration, generally for misdemeanor cases and some felonies.

Probation: A sentence to supervision of a defendant in the community involving standard terms and conditions, as well as special conditions imposed by a court.

Time served: A sentence of jail time that has already been completed by the defendant during the course of the case.

Community service: A sentence to complete a certain number of hours of “useful public service” in the community.

Fine: A fixed monetary sanction imposed by a judge based on the severity of the crime committed and the ability of the defendant to pay.

Fees: Charges imposed to cover system costs.

Demographics

Age: Defendant and victim age is calculated at the time of the case is filed.

Gender: Gender is defined as determined by law enforcement in the following categories: Male, Female, Other.

Ethnicity: For purposes of these indicators, ethnicity is defined as Latino/a or non-Latino/a.

Race: Race is defined as the racial category as determined by law enforcement in the following categories: Asian, Black, Latino/a, and White.

The Santa Clara County population by race/ethnicity was generated from information publicly available through the United States Census Bureau. In 2020 the U.S. Census collected race and ethnicity as two questions: one for ethnicity, “Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino”, and another for race with six categories: “White,” “Black or African American,” “American Indian or Alaska Native,” “Asian”, “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander”, and “Some Other Race”. To best compare the general population to the population of individuals with criminal cases filed, we have used similar logic to categorize individuals. If the individual is identified as Latino/a and White, they are categorized as Latino/a. If the individual’s race is logged as Black, they are categorized as Black regardless of their ethnicity.

Data Terms

Average: The average of a set of numbers is the sum of the numbers divided by the total number of values in the set. For example, to find the average of 24, 55, 17, 87 and 100, first find the sum of the numbers: 24 + 55 + 17 + 87 + 100 = 283 and divide by 5 to get 56.6.

Median: The median is the value separating the higher half of a data sample from the lower half. It may be thought of as the "middle" value of a data set. For example, in the data set 9, the median is 6, the fourth number in the sample.

Outlier: An outlier is a data point that differs from other observations, is much bigger or much smaller.

Methods

This dashboard aggregates data from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office’s case management system.

We present data in three sections, summarizing information about different parts of the prosecution process: referrals, filings, and dispositions. In each section we present general trends and an overview of cases and characteristics. We also present three sections of Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPIs), which are designed to measure capacity and efficiency, community safety and well-being, and fairness and justice. PPIs offer an array of metrics that can be tracked over time to inform decision making and policy development.

In each of these, we present data at the case-level, meaning that we present information about each case rather than about each charge. This also means that we do not present information about individual defendants, but about individual cases; the same defendant may appear in the dashboard for multiple cases. This requires some aggregation up to the case-level, meaning that we take information about all charges and dispositions in a case and use that to make a statement about the case as a whole.