How Long Does it Take to Process a Criminal Case in North Carolina?

The Criminal Justice Innovation Lab recently released a report analyzing disposition and pending case times for North Carolina criminal cases. The full report is here. In this blog post, I discuss our findings regarding statewide disposition times as compared to Benchmarks developed by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). As we explain in the report, the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law & Justice recommended that North Carolina examine its current case processing time guidelines using the NCSC Benchmarks as a guide. We thus compared North Carolina disposition times against those metrics. As discussed below, statewide median disposition times in district and superior court, for all case types, fell short of the NCSC Benchmarks. District Court Non-Traffic Misdemeanors In 2018, the statewide median disposition time for non-traffic misdemeanors in district court was 172 days. The figure immediately below compares statewide median disposition times to the NCSC Benchmarks. Traffic Misdemeanors In 2018, the statewide median disposition time for traffic misdemeanors in district court was 150 days. The figure immediately below compares statewide median disposition times to the NCSC Benchmarks, again showing numbers that fall short of those benchmarks. Superior Court Felonies In 2019, the median statewide disposition time for superior court felonies was 259 days. As shown in the figure immediately below, statewide disposition times fall short of the NCSC Benchmarks. Misdemeanors In 2018, the statewide median disposition time for non-traffic misdemeanors in superior court was 209 days; for traffic misdemeanors it was 207 days. Both metrics fall short [...]