As a result of a growing demand on the part of students and scholars of the administration of criminal justice for national statistical data on judicial criminal statistics, the Bureau of the Census was authorized by an Act of Congress in 1931 to compile and publish annual statistics relating to crime and criminal administration. Judicial statistics were first collected for the year 1932. Sixteen States, including the District of Columbia, cooperated by furnishing data covering the disposition of criminal cases in the courts of general jurisdiction. Since that time the number of States cooperating has increased so that 30 States furnished statistics of this nature for the year 1936. The annual collection of judicial criminal statistics is made by means of two tally sheets which are furnished to the clerks of the trial courts in each county at the end of the calendar year. The clerks are requested to tally on the first sheet the number of defendants disposed of during the year according to offense charged and disposition, and on the second the number sentenced according to offense and sentence. In each State a supervisor is selected who acts as the Special Agent of the Census Bureau and who distributes these sheets to the clerks within his State and collects and edits them before returning them to the Census Bureau. All of the work done by the supervisors and clerks of court is on a voluntary basis. This method of collecting data was adopted on the theory that there would be in most States an agency or official already engaged in the collection of similar statistics within the State who would, in the interests of promoting national uniform statistics, supervise the collection for the Census Bureau and see to it that it was accurately and properly made. As a matter of fact, there are very few States in which there are such agencies or officials who are in a position to offer real supervision or assistance in the collection of these data. Most collections of judicial statistics made by such officials as attorney generals, secretaries of State, or judicial councils are made without any expert analysis or evaluation of the material gathered.