A statutory code consists of 8 digits. The first three are the section, the fourth is a colon, and the last four digits are the section number. If the section number has only 3 digits it should be entered with a leading 0. Alphabetic codes never appear except in the 3rd digit of the title.
Example 1: To select all records for the two most common drug charges under Title 21 -- Sections 841 and 846:
Example 2: To select all records under the three most common weapons charges:21 :0841+21 :0846
Failure to enter a code correctly will result in records for that statute not being selected for your data slice. Common entry problems are not having the colon in the fourth digit (with appropriate space before the colon if the title only requires two characters) and not using a leading zero for the section number where it consists of only 3 digits. Note: because subsections are not required entries in the database it is not possible to select records by title, section AND subsection.18 :0922+18 :0924+26 :5861
Whenever possible, it is a good idea to check counts resulting for each statute selected in a data slice against the same counts where shown for this selection using the Express or Going Deeper tool. These should always match if the selection was entered properly. ic