JUSTFAIR: Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archive Inferred Records.

Maria-Veronica Ciocanel,Rebecca Santorella,Shilad Sen,Adam Hufstetler,Christian Michael Smith,Chad M Topaz

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0241381

Abstract

In the United States, the public has a constitutional right to access criminal trial proceedings. In practice, it can be difficult or impossible for the public to exercise this right. We present JUSTFAIR: Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archive Inferred Records, a database of criminal sentencing decisions made in federal district courts. We have compiled this data set from public sources including the United States Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Center, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, and Wikipedia. With nearly 600,000 records from the years 2001—2018, JUSTFAIR is the first large scale, free, public database that links information about defendants and their demographic characteristics with information about their federal crimes, their sentences, and, crucially, the identity of the sentencing judge.

Highlights

In the United States, the public’s right to access court proceedings and court records is frequently debated and litigated [1]
We have compiled this data set from public sources including the United States Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Center, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, and Wikipedia
If we find that these Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) records all have the same judge initials, we assign these initials not just to the record we selected, but to any other record in our United States Sentencing Commission (USSC)/Federal Judicial Center (FJC) data that shares the same value of CASLGKY

Summary

Introduction

In the United States, the public’s right to access court proceedings and court records is frequently debated and litigated [1]. We have compiled this data set from public sources including the United States Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Center, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, and Wikipedia. In service of this mission, USSC maintains publicly accessible data sets, including files which provide information about sentences given to individuals in federal district courts.

Results

Conclusion