FAQ Listing

Yes. The ARD collection includes all deaths that result from any use of force by law enforcement officers, regardless of whether the officer intended the use of force to be lethal. To resolve an incident, law enforcement officers are authorized to use force in an escalating series of actions. The amount of force used ranges from the mere presence of an officer to the use of lethal force.

Most law enforcement agencies have policies that guide the appropriate level of force for a given situation. Law enforcement personnel are trained to only use lethal force when an arrest subject poses a serious threat to the officer or another individual and an arrest would be imminent. The threshold of criminal behavior to prompt an arrest is far lower than the threshold to prompt the use of lethal force.

Domestic relationships include intimate partners, immediate family members, and other relatives.

Intimate relationships are defined as current or former spouses, boyfriends, or girlfriends, including same sex relationships. Intimates are distinguished from

• other relatives, such as a parent, child, sibling, grandparent, in-law, cousin
• acquaintances, such as a friend, coworker, neighbor, schoolmate, someone known
• strangers who are anyone not previously known by the victim.

Violence between intimates is difficult to measure because it often occurs in private, and victims are often reluctant to report incidents to anyone because of shame or fear of reprisal.

The types of contact in the PPCS include those initiated by residents, those initiated by police, and resulting from a traffic accident. Resident-initiated contacts include reporting a crime, disturbance, or suspicious activity; reporting a non-crime emergency, such as a medical emergency; reporting a non-emergency, such as asking for directions, custody enforcement, and court orders; participating in a block watch or other anti-crime programs; or approaching or seeking help from police for another reason. Police-initiated contacts include being stopped by police while in a public place or a parked vehicle (i.e., street stop), being stopped by police while driving a motor vehicle (i.e., traffic stop), riding as a passenger in a car that was stopped by police, being arrested, or being stopped or approached by police for some other reason. The PPCS also collected data on contacts resulting from a traffic accident.

Sworn officers have full arrest powers granted by a state or local government. Nonsworn officers do not have the ability to arrest and serve in the capacity of a security officer.

CBP officers are tasked with stopping terrorists, terrorist weapons, illegal drugs, aliens, and materials harmful to agriculture from entering the United States. These officers perform patrol and response functions along, and in the vicinity of, the 8,000 miles of U.S. boundaries.

In 2005, 24% of prosecutors’ offices reported problems recruiting new staff, and 35% had problems retaining staff attorneys. Thirty-seven percent of full-time medium offices and 27% of full-time large offices reported problems recruiting new staff attorneys, compared to 11% of part-time offices. Among offices identifying staff retention and recruitment problems, salary was the number one concern.

The Prosecutors in State Courts statistical series began in 1990. The series focuses on the nation's 2,300 state court prosecutors' offices that handle felony cases in state courts of general jurisdiction. The National District Attorneys Association (NDAA), prosecutors across the nation, and individuals interested in acquiring a better understanding of state prosecutor operations extensively use the data on the number of staff, annual budget, criminal caseloads, and other office characteristics. The 2007 National Census of State Court Prosecutors (NCSP), currently underway, will provide more recent estimates. See Prosecutors in State Courts, 2005, to read more about prosecutors in state courts in 2005.

Overall, plaintiffs won in 56% of all tort and contract trials in 2005. The rate of plaintiff success varied according to the type of case litigated. Plaintiff win rates were not applicable to real property trials.

Plaintiffs were more likely to win in contract cases (66%) than in tort cases (52%). Mortgage foreclosure (89%), animal attack (75%), and seller plaintiff (75%) cases had the highest percentage of plaintiffs who prevailed. Plaintiffs won in over half of the trials for motor vehicle accidents (64%), employment discrimination (61%), and product liability (55%) cases, but prevailed in less than a third of medical malpractice (23%) cases.

The 2005 Civil Justice Survey of State Courts (CJSSC) shows that about 26,950 tort, contact, and real property cases were disposed of by bench or jury trial in state courts of general jurisdiction nationwide. This amounts to a trial rate of approximately 3% for all general civil cases filed in 2005. Of the almost 27,000 trials, 68% were jury trials while in the remaining 32%, litigants waived their rights to a jury trial and had their cases heard before a judge only. See Civil Bench and Jury Trials in State Courts, 2005.

Eligible applicants are professional or scholarly societies that must—

1. be a U.S. based national or international organization whose members pursue scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the measurement, etiology, consequences, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency 
2. have a history of promoting criminal justice education, scholarly research, and policy analysis
3. have a membership that includes scholars who are national or international in scope and multidisciplinary in orientation, research professionals in agencies from all sectors of the criminal justice system, and students pursuing studies in criminal justice or related social sciences areas
4. convene an annual meeting that provides a forum for sharing and discussing research and policy analyses relevant to crime and delinquency, at which funded fellowships will be featured
5. if it is a for-profit organization, agree to forgo any profit or management fee.

Foreign governments, foreign organizations, and foreign institutions of higher education are not eligible to apply.