Miami-Dade Court Records
Court records for the Miami-Dade County Criminal Court and Circuit Criminal Court. This includes charge-level, case-level and defendant-level information going back to 1980.
All criminal records processed through the Miami-Dade County Criminal Court and Circuit Criminal Court
Access
The Miami-Dade Court Records are available through a public request procedure. Researchers do not have to submit a request that explains the nature or their research or DUA, but they will have to register with the Miami-Dade County Clerk’s office and provide a notarized form confirming their identity.
Timeline for Access
Data should be available immediately upon completing the access procedures. Data is made available for download from the commercial data services portal for 30 days, and then requires additional payment for extended access.
Lag Time
Data is released daily with criminal case information processed by the court in the previous day. This includes cases that are filed and cases that are dismissed. New felony and misdemeanor case information is released bi-weekly (Monday and Thursday), descriptions of dispositions are released weekly, and information about cases that have been convicted or otherwise closed is released monthly.
Cost
The data are available as bulk data downloads through a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or through the use of Automated Programmatic Interfaces (APIs). Bulk data downloads cost $80 per folder per month, which includes all file types listed in the “Criminal Public Access Folder Description” documentation. Through APIs data costs $0.05 per query, which corresponds to a case.
Linking
Data is provided with personally identifiable information, enabling researchers to link to other data sets.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- Address
- Date of birth
Data Contents
The Miami-Dade County Clerk’s Office compiles court information from all criminal courts in the county.
Charge-level data includes the charge of the original arrest, the filing charge, the final disposition charge, information on the severity of each charge as well as outcomes and punishments where applicable. It also has uniquely identifying information about the defendant.
Case-level data includes information on attorney type, arrest date, the date of each court appearance from bail to sentencing, the presiding judge, bail type and amount (when monetary), and whether bail was met. It also has uniquely identifying information about the defendant.
Defendant-level data includes the name, gender, ethnicity, birth date and zip code of each defendant.
For a complete list of variables and file structures, see the “Criminal Public Access Folder Description”.
In addition to criminal court records, the Miami-Dade Clerk’s Office provides access to official records and traffic court information (available through API), as well as civil court, code enforcement, family court and marriage licenses (available only through bulk folder downloads).
Partial List of Variables
Race, sex, DOB, address, case number, police number, jail number, arrest date, type and degree of offense, disposition date, plea, sentence type, sentence duration
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
unknown
Other Research Using this Data Set
Dobbie, Will, Jacop Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang, 2018. “The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges.” American Economic Review 108(2):201-240.