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DATA ELEMENTS AND DATA ELEMENT CONCEPTS


FINALISED DEFENDANT


IDENTIFYING AND DEFINITIONAL ATTRIBUTES

Metadata type:

DATA ELEMENT CONCEPT Version: 1

Definition:

A person or organisation for which all charges relating to the one case, have been formally completed so that the defendant ceases to be an item of work to be dealt with by the courts.

Context:

The determination of a Finalised Defendant in the ABS criminal courts collection and CADC provides a measure of a state/territories completed workload, that is, the number of persons or organisations for whom a criminal matter has been completed.

A Finalised Defendant is determined by combining the final charge data for those offences relating to the one case and regarded as one unit of work by the courts.

Please refer to Related metadata for the list of data elements that will need to have order of precedence rules applied to create a Finalised Defendant.

All charges for a defendant (as a unit of work) have been finalised and so have a Date of Finalisation, Method of Finalisation and Final Plea.

A defendant is considered finalised on the date of the last formal hearing that takes place in relation to that defendant and will correspond to the date of the handing down of a judgement or sentence. Where sentencing is held over until a later date for defendants proven guilty, they are considered finalised on the date of sentencing.

Within all criminal courts, it is possible for some but not all charges to be finalised at a point in time. For example, a charge may be withdrawn and a replacement charge may then be added to the defendant case. Such a defendant is not considered finalised until all charges are finalised. Hence, the latest charge date of finalisation should signal the inclusion of the defendant in finalisation data.

The following should not be considered a finalisation (i.e. they are a continuation of an original criminal matter):

• the transfer of a defendant to a new geographical location within the same court level;
• a hung jury (where no verdict has been reached and the trial process is to be recommenced);
• mistrials (where a new trial will be scheduled);
• referrals to a Mental Health Review Tribunal to consider whether a defendant is fit to stand trial;
• where an Appeal court rules on a point of law but the charges have not been finalised in the original court; and
• the issuing of a bench warrant.

Related metadata:

Is related to the data element concept:

Defendant

Date of Finalisation
Final Plea
Method of Finalisation
Duration
Principal Offence
Principal Sentence

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