Adult Criminal Court Survey (ACCS)

Detailed information for 2004/2005

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

3312

The objective of this survey is to develop and maintain a national adult criminal court database of statistical information on appearances, charges, and cases in adult criminal courts.

Data release - October 23, 2007

Description

The objective of the Adult Criminal Court Survey (ACCS) is to develop and maintain a database of statistical information on appearances, charges, and cases in adult criminal courts. The survey is intended to be a census of federal statute charges heard in provincial and superior criminal courts in Canada. It includes information on the age and sex of the accused, case decision patterns, sentencing information regarding the length of prison and probation, and amount of fine, as well as case-processing data such as case elapsed time. These data on federal statute charges heard in adult criminal courts in the reference period are collected by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) in collaboration with provincial and territorial government departments responsible for adult criminal courts. The data are collected to respond to the needs of the provincial/territorial and federal departments of justice and attorneys-general, researchers and policy analysts, academics and the media, as well as to inform the public how adults are dealt with by adult provincial/territorial criminal courts in Canada.

Statistical activity

The survey is currently administered as part of the National Justice Statistics Initiative (NJSI). Since 1981, the federal, provincial and territorial Deputy Ministers responsible for the administration of justice in Canada, with the Chief Statistician, have been working together in an enterprise known as the NJSI. The mandate of the NJSI is to provide information to the justice community as well as the public on criminal and civil justice in Canada. Although this responsibility is shared among federal, provincial and territorial departments, the lead responsibility for the development of Canada's statistical system remains with Statistics Canada.

The survey is currently administered as part of the Courts Program. The objective of the Courts Program is to collect and disseminate information on the operation of the court system in Canada.

Reference period: Fiscal year (April 1 to March 31)

Collection period: June of the reference year to June of the year following the reference year

Subjects

  • Civil courts and family law
  • Crime and justice
  • Criminal courts

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The objective of the Adult Criminal Court Survey (ACCS) is to develop and maintain a national adult criminal court database of statistical information on appearances, charges, and cases in adult criminal courts. The survey is intended to be a census of federal statute charges heard in adult criminal courts.

The survey includes persons 18 years or older at the time of the offence, companies, as well as youths who have been transferred to adult criminal court.

Instrument design

ACCS data collection tools and data requirements were developed with the assistance of representatives from provincial and territorial departments responsible for adult criminal courts in Canada.

Micro-data are extracted electronically from administrative databases by means of a software interface and submitted to Statistics Canada in an electronic format. Prior to data collection commencing, these interfaces are extensively tested to ensure the required data standards are met. Computer-aided data collection techniques are not used other than local programming used to extract administrative data from information systems.

Sampling

Data are collected for all units of the target population, therefore, no sampling is done.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2004-06-01 to 2005-06-30

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are extracted from administrative files.

The initial stage involves the recording of court proceedings in some form of docket at court locations.

Data from court dockets are data captured into provincial and territorial automated operational systems. Data are then transferred into automated information system files within the jurisdiction.

Data are provided to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) via an interface software which selects the in-scope information from the automated court operational systems or information management systems in the provinces/territories. The records are structured according to either the ACCS record layout or the Integrated Criminal Court Survey (ICCS) record layout and sent to CCJS for processing. (The ICCS collects data for both the ACCS and the Youth Court Survey (YCS, see record number 3309), thus eliminating the need for two interfaces.)

Error detection

A number of tools have been developed for the ICCS/ACCS to minimize or correct errors. System error may be introduced during the extraction and transcription of provincial or territorial data into ICCS/ACCS format. The ICCS/ACCS has attempted to minimize this source of error by implementing a standard interface development methodology that requires a complete testing of the software by both the ICCS/ACCS and the province/territory prior to implementation.

The ICCS/ACCS data processing systems may introduce system errors and edit and imputation errors into the data. To minimize the impact of these errors, all systems developed at Statistics Canada, including the ICCS/ACCS data processing system, are subject to logic testing by the developer, user acceptance testing performed by the CCJS and/or the Methodology Division of Statistics Canada, and volume testing performed by the system developer.

Imputation

Field values that do not meet edit specifications or are out of range are deemed to be 'not available' and are re-coded accordingly such that processing may continue. Imputations such as donor imputation are not performed.

Records that are missing key fields (province or territory, court location, information number, accused identifier, charge sequence number, and court appearance date) are rejected.

Estimation

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Quality evaluation

The incoming data are assessed for consistency and completeness. Every year, a data quality report and a set of verification tables are sent to reporting jurisdictions for their review and verification prior to release. These reports also highlight problems, if any, that were observed during analysis of the data, and include an historical trend analysis of the main indicators, such as number of cases by type of decision.

The products from this survey are subject to both institutional and peer review (justice departments, etc.).

Data assessment activities are regularly undertaken by both the provinces/territories and the CCJS to monitor data quality and to provide direction for any modifications where data quality problems are identified. The data are subjected to year-to-year comparisons. Comparisons are made between the survey data and figures contained in the provincial/territorial reports of court operational or case management systems.

Comparisons with Other Sectors of the Justice System:

It is difficult to make comparisons between data reported by courts and data from other sectors of the criminal justice system (i.e., police and corrections). There is no single unit of count (i.e., incidents, offences, charges, cases or persons) which is defined consistently across the major sectors of the justice system. As well, charges actually laid can be different from the most serious offence by which incidents are categorized. In addition, the number and type of charges laid by police may change at the pre-court stage or during the court process. Time lags between the various stages of the justice process also make comparisons difficult.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data which would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

Preliminary results are not released or available to the public. They are simply used for verification purposes and for draft CCJS reports.

There are no names of individuals collected by the survey. Names are processed through a Soundex Algorithm before being submitted to the CCJS so that only a unique identifier is produced.

CCJS has a policy of not releasing any tables or cross-tabs that may identify a particular individual.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.

Data accuracy

Adult criminal courts in nine provinces and three territories report to the ICCS/ACCS. Reporting jurisdictions include: Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. In addition, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut reported superior court data to the ICCS/ACCS. These twelve jurisdictions represent approximately 94% of the national adult criminal court caseload.

The absence of data from some superior court jurisdictions may result in a slight under-estimation of the severity of sentences imposed across Canada. The reason for this is that some of the most serious cases, which are likely to result in the most severe sanctions, are processed in superior courts. Similarly, the absence of superior court data from certain jurisdictions may result in a slight underestimation of case elapsed times across Canada. Again, this is due to the most serious cases being processed in superior courts. More serious cases involve a defence election, may involve a preliminary inquiry, and jury selection, and therefore may require more appearances and take more time to complete. While these limitations are important, comparisons from one year to another are possible if the reporting jurisdictions used in the comparison are held constant.

Some limitations on coverage of the survey are also noted in the document "Limitations on Coverage (2004-2005)" found in the 'Additional documentation' link below.

Documentation

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