RDF Terms

See below for a changelog dating back to 4 Nov 2025.

This page lists all terms (besides URIs and literals) used in SCALES's graph data, which is accessible via FRINK, the query service for the NSF Proto-OKN. However, at time of writing, FRINK was serving an old version of our data, so some of the below terms may be missing.

Except where noted, this list does not distinguish between terms that we use as predicates, i.e. <uri_1 NamespaceTerm uri_2>, and terms that we use as types, i.e. <uri_1 RDF.Type NamespaceTerm>. In general, though, we try to employ all of the below terms in the predicate format, and thereafter we add additional RDF.Type triples as a courtesy where appropriate.

The terms are sorted by their namespace of origin, with the header of each section linking to the namespace prefix we use in our graph. Most of these namespaces are compliant with NIEM 5.0; the exceptions are NIBRS, KWGR, KWG-ONT, DCGEOID, TREATMENT, and SCALES.

JXDM

• Arrest
• ArrestAgency
• ArrestCharge
• ArrestOfficial
• ArrestSubject
• Attorney
• BondAmount
• BondType
• Booking
• BookingDate
• BookingFacility
• BookingSubject
• CaseCharge
• CaseCourt
• CaseDefendantParty
• CaseDefenseAttorney
• CaseInitiatingAttorney
• CaseInitiatingParty
• CaseJudge
• CaseOfficialRoleText
• Charge
• ChargeDisposition
• ChargeDispositionCategoryText
• ChargeFiledCase
• ChargeSentence
• ChargeSequenceID
• ChargeSeverityLevelCode
• ChargeText
• Court
• CourtCategoryCode
• CourtName
• DrugCategoryCode
• IncidentArrest
• Judge
• JudicialOfficialCategoryText
• LawEnforcementOfficial
• OrganizationCategoryNLETSCode
• ParticipantRoleCategoryText
• PersonCharge
• PersonSexCode
• RegisterAction
• RegisterActionDate
• RegisterActionDescriptionText
• RegisterOfActions
• ReleaseDate
• Sentence
• SentenceDescriptionText
• SentenceTerm
• StatuteKeywordText
• TermDuration

NIEM-Core

• ActivityDate
• AddressPostalCode
• AdministrativeID
• CaseDocketID
• CaseGeneralCategoryText
• CaseSubCategoryText
• ContactMailingAddress
• CourtCase
• EndDate
• EntityName
• FacilityName
• Incident
• JurisdictionText
• Location
• MeasureDecimalValue
• MeasureUnitText
• OrganizationLocation
• OrganizationName
• Person
• PersonFullName
• PersonID
• PersonRaceText
• PersonSexText
• PhysicalAddress
• RelativeLocation
• RelativeLocationDistanceMeasure
• RelativeLocationReferencePoint
• StartDate
• StatusDescriptionText
• URLID

OCCS

• FacilityFunctionCode

RDF

• rdf.type
• rdf._X

NIBRS

• OffenseUCRCode
• NIBRSReportCategoryCode

KWGR

• Following FRINK's standards, we use KWGR.administrativeRegion.USA.{code} as the object in any triple representing a location's FIPS code.

KWG-ONT

• Following FRINK's standards, we use KWG_ONT.AdministrativeRegion_2 as the predicate in any triple representing a location's FIPS code.

DCGEOID

• Following FRINK's standards, we use DCGEOID.{id} as the object in any triple representing a location's census block group ID.

TREATMENT (RuralKG terms)

• TreatmentProvider

SCALES (custom terms)

Term	Explanation
BirthYear	Used for data sources that list defendant birth years but not full birthdays.
CivilCase	NIEM lacks case-type distinctions finer than NC.CourtCase.
CriminalCase	NIEM lacks case-type distinctions finer than NC.CourtCase.
OntologyLabel	Links a docket entry to a tag in our litigation ontology.
Party	JXDM lacks a general term beyond CaseInitiatingParty and CaseDefendantParty, which don't encompass all possible types of parties.
appointedByParty	Derived from the "party of appointing president" FJC field.
assignedToDefendant	Derived from the per-party judge-assignment data in PACER criminal cases.
containsNeighborhood	Links a census block group to a city neighborhood name; currently used only to add human-legible context to our Atlanta-area demo for the NSF year-3 kickoff.
hasChargeType	Derived from the pending_counts / terminating_counts dichotomy in PACER.
hasCommissionDate	Derived from the eponymous FJC field.
hasEntityReference	Links a docket entry to the disambiguated ID of an entity referenced in that entry.
hasExtraInfo	Derived from the raw_info PACER field.
hasHighestOffenseLevelOpening	Derived from the eponymous PACER field.
hasHighestOffenseLevelTerminated	Derived from the eponymous PACER field.
hasIdbX	Derived from the fields in the FJC IDB (listed in the civil and criminal codebooks) and encoded as hasIdbCircuit, hasIdbDistrict, etc. Our graph does not include all fields, so some trial and error may be required when attempting to use a particular field.
hasIfpJudgeAttribution	Derived from our in forma pauperis tags.
hasIfpLabel	Derived from our in forma pauperis tags.
hasMemberCase	For a given case, links the ucid listed in the lead_case_id PACER field to the ucid of the given case.
hasReferenceToOtherEntry	Derived from the edges PACER field.
hasRelatedCase	Derived from the eponymous PACER field.
hasUVAJudgeDirID	Links a disambiguated judge entity ID to the ID embedded in the corresponding URL in UVA's BR/MAG Judge Database.
isInCircuit	Links a URI for a federal district court to a literal specifying its court circuit.
isInstanceOfEntity	Links a court entity (judge, party, lawyer, or law firm) to a disambiguated entity ID.
LawFirm	JXDM has JudicialOfficialFirm, but that term is slightly too ambiguous for our purposes.

Changelog

Note that changes to SCALES URIs are not tracked below, following the convention that RDF URIs are essentially arbitary unique IDs within a controlled namespace.

v1.1 (tbd)

all datasets

• Added URIs from the DCGEOID / KWGR / KWG_ONT namespaces where possible, to conform with FRINK's geo-data standards

APD

• Changed NC.LocaleCensusBlockID to NC.Location, because we're using block-group IDs rather than block IDs

• Added arrestagency.ttl, which contains a few metadata triples (using NC.OrganizationName / NC.LocationCityName / NC.LocationStateName / J.OrganizationCategoryNLETSCode, connected to arrest URIs using J.ArrestAgency)

• Added supplemental_triples.ttl, which includes a number of triples required for cross-graph queries referencing RuralKG's graph in our NSF year-3 demo (as documented in these commits)

• Added <arrest_uri NC.Incident incident_uri> and <charge_uri J.Arrest arrest_uri> to supplement J.IncidentArrest and J.ArrestCharge triples pointing in the other direction, because the former format may allow for a simpler graph-schema diagram

Clayton

• Changed SCALES.DocketTable / SCALES.DocketEntry to J.RegisterOfActions / J.RegisterAction to match PACER

• For party URIs, changed NC.PersonFullName to NC.EntityName, given that Clayton parties aren't always people

• Added <case_uri RDF.type NC.CourtCase> in addition to the SCALES.CriminalCase / SCALES.CivilCase types

• Added an additional <party_uri RDF.type SCALES.Party> edge for parties that only have a J.CaseInitiatingParty or J.CaseDefendantParty type triple

• Added courts.ttl, which contains a few metadata triples (using J.CourtName / FIPS.CountyCode / J.CourtCategoryCode / NC.AddressPostalCode, connected to case URIs using J.CaseCourt)

Fulton

• Added <charge_uri J.Booking booking_uri> and replaced charge-date triples with booking-date triples, given that charges and bookings are conceptually distinct and dates attach to the bookings rather than the charges

• Corrected J.BookingDate / J.ReleaseDate (which don't exist) to NC.StartDate / NC.EndDate

• Changed SCALES.DocketTable / SCALES.DocketEntry to J.RegisterOfActions / J.RegisterAction to match PACER

• Removed <party_uri J.ParticipantRoleCategoryText "defendant">, because not every arrestee becomes a defendant on a case

• Changed the type of party URIs from SCALES.Agent to J.BookingSubject, because (1) SCALES.Agent isn't used anywhere else and (2) J.BookingSubject provides extra clarity

• Added facility.ttl, which contains a few metadata triples (using NC.FacilityName / NC.PhysicalAddress / OCCS.FacilityFunctionCode, connected to booking URIs using J.BookingFacility)

PACER

• Added <party_uri SCALES.isInstanceOfEntity entity_uri> for judges/parties/lawyers/firms, and <entry_uri SCALES.hasEntityReference entity_uri> for judge references in docket entries

• Added <case_uri SCALES.OntologyLabel label_uri> to provide ontology-label data on a per-case basis

• Corrected J.CriminalCase / J.CivilCase (which don't exist) to SCALES.CriminalCase / SCALES.CivilCase

• Added <case_uri RDF.type NC.CourtCase> in addition to the SCALES.CriminalCase / SCALES.CivilCase types

• Added an additional <party_uri RDF.type SCALES.Party> edge for parties that only have a J.CaseInitiatingParty or J.CaseDefendantParty type

• Changed SCALES.Firm to SCALES.LawFirm for clarity

• Changed SCALES.hasFJCNodeID to SCALES.hasFJCJudgeDirID for clarity, and added <judge_uri NC.URLID "fjc.gov/node/{v}"> so the user is aware of the judge directory on the FJC's website

• Removed <rdflib.BNode() NC.CourtCase case_uri>, because (1) the use of a blank node at the root of the graph derives from an XML convention that we almost certainly don't need to adhere to and (2) aa user seeking case URIs can just search for URIs of type NC.CourtCase now that we use RDF.type wherever possible

v1.0 (4 Nov 2025)

• Original version, corresponding to the first Y3-demo-compatible build and the soft relaunch of dataexplorer.scales-okn.org