DATA ELEMENTS AND DATA ELEMENT CONCEPTS
DURATION
IDENTIFYING AND DEFINITIONAL ATTRIBUTES
Metadata type:
DERIVED DATA ELEMENT Version: 1
Definition:
The time elapsed in days from the earliest Date of Initiation to the latest Date of Finalisation for a defendant.
Context:
Duration provides a measure of the timeliness with which a court deals with its criminal workload.
The total Duration for a finalised defendant includes the time taken by the defence and prosecution to prepare their cases, the time required to list a case and time taken for any hearings. Actual hearing time typically occupies only a small proportion of the overall case duration.
A major factor governing the processing time required for a case is whether or not a trial or defended hearing is required. In general, a defended case will require significantly greater amounts of court hearing time than a hearing of a guilty plea. In addition, the timing of a guilty plea, at initiation or later in the case, will affect the time taken to finalise the case.
Duration statistics should be interpreted with caution, as there are numerous jurisdictional, legislative and procedural differences that impact on the courts' ability to process defendant cases, for example, the execution of a bench warrant and court initiated diversions.
RELATIONAL AND REPRESENTATIONAL ATTRIBUTES
Datatype:
Numeric
Field size:
Min: 1 Max: 5
Representational form:
Quantitative value
Representational layout:
N (NNNN)
Data domain:
Count of whole days
Guide for use:
The ABS criminal courts collection calculates Duration for a defendant as the time taken in days from Date of Initiation to Date of Finalisation. Please refer to the entries for Date of Initiation and Date of Finalisation for how to determine the respective dates for a defendant's case when there are different dates for the charges.
Duration is derived by:
Duration = Date of Finalisation - Date of Initiation +1
To convert the duration from days to weeks, the resulting figure from the calculation above should be divided by 7 and rounded down. For example, a duration of 5 weeks and 5 days would be taken as 5 weeks.
Proposed output categories in days (and weeks) for use in a criminal courts collection are:
Under 42 days (Under 6 weeks)
42 days and under 91 days (6 weeks and under 13 weeks)
91 days and under 140 days (13 weeks and under 20 weeks)
140 days and under 182 days (20 weeks and under 26 weeks)
182 days and under 273 days (26 weeks and under 39 weeks)
273 days and under 364 days (39 weeks and under 52 weeks)
364 days and under 455 days (52 weeks and under 65 weeks)
455 days and under 546 days (65 weeks and under 78 weeks)
546 days and under 637 days (78 weeks and under 91 weeks)
637 days and under 728 days (91 weeks and under 104 weeks)
728 days and over (104 weeks and over)
Unknown
Verification rules:
For the ABS collection, duration is only applicable for finalised defendants; that is all charges for a defendant must have a valid Method of Finalisation.
Collection methods:
Duration is a derived data element based on the Date of Initiation and Date of Finalisation of a defendant.
Related metadata:
Is derived from the data elements:
Date of Initiation
Date of Finalisation
Is related to the data element concepts:
Active Pending Defendant
Finalised Defendant
ADMINISTRATIVE ATTRIBUTES
Source document:
1. Higher Criminal Courts Collection Manual
2. Magistrates' Criminal Courts Collection Manual
3. 2004 Data Collection Manual
Source organisation:
1. Australian Bureau of Statistics
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics
3. Court Administration Working Group
History:
Commenced 2005
Comments:
None
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