ABSTRACT
There are more than 16,000 courts in operation in the United States (Rottman & Strickland, 2006). Most of these are at the local level in cities and counties across the country, and they employ more than 30,000 justices, judges, magistrates, or other judicial officers (Schauffler, LaFountain, Strickland, & Raftery, 2006). As with police agencies, the large number of individual courts in the United States reflects our belief in local autonomy. Justice agents filed more than 20 million criminal cases (excluding traffic cases) in American state courts in 2010 (LaFountain, Schauffler, Strickland, & Holt, 2012). Another 55 million traffic cases also arose that year. In addition, courts process cases involving domestic relations (e.g., divorce) and civil disputes each year. Thus, crime is a part-time function for our courts. Figure 7.1 describes the workload of America’s courts.
