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September 24, 2022
"Are progressive chief prosecutors effective in reducing prison use and cumulative racial/ethnic disadvantage? Evidence from Florida"
The title of this post is the title of this new article recently published in the journal Criminology & Public Policy and authored by Ojmarrh Mitchell, Daniela Oramas Mora, Tracey L. Sticco and Lyndsay N. Boggess. Here is its abstract:
Research Summary
Progressive chief prosecutors, campaigning on platforms calling for reducing prison populations and racial/ethnic disparities, have been elected in numerous jurisdictions across the United States in recent years. Yet, there is no empirical research that compares case outcomes between jurisdictions headed by progressive and traditional chief prosecutors. In this research, we utilize a cumulative case outcome approach that tracks cases from arrest to disposition to examine whether cases prosecuted under progressive chief prosecutors receive less punitive sanctions and exhibit smaller racial/ethnic disparities. We find that cases adjudicated in progressive jurisdictions are more likely to end without a felony conviction and less likely to result in a prison sentence. Racial but not generally ethnic disadvantage is evident in case outcomes, and racial disparities are smaller in jurisdictions led by progressive chief prosecutors.
Policy Implications
The election of progressive prosecutors is a radical departure from earlier approaches aimed at controlling prison populations and mitigating racial disparities. Instead of restricting the discretion of criminal justice actors, voters are relying on progressive, reformist prosecutors to use their enormous discretion in less punitive and more egalitarian fashions. This research indicates that progressive chief prosecutors do, in fact, reduce prison use and racial disparities.
September 24, 2022 at 09:25 AM | Permalink
Comments
Understandably and conspicuously, no mention of whether progressive prosecutors reduce crime. Perhaps we could inquire of those right-wing freaks, San Francisco voters, who recently rendered judgment about the crime-fighting effectiveness of their "progressive" prosecutor.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 24, 2022 11:24:31 AM
Bill, the data I have seen indicated SF crime was generally down under DA Boudin (here is a C&C post discussing that data -- https://www.crimeandconsequences.blog/?p=6757).
And recent SF crime data suggests that murder and many other crimes are now up under DA Jenkins (here is a press piece on this front: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/shootings-provide-another-reality-check-for-san-francisco-s-failing-mayor/article_9d8177ea-3b68-11ed-8c15-d3b698d7078c.html. A better source may be this crime dashboard: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard)
Do you think actual crime data is a valid metric here? Do you have relevant crime data regarding the role and impact of various prosecutors to note here? I feel quite strongly that crime data serves as an important metric for assessing the work of prosecutors. But such data can be hard to assess in both the short- and long-term for voters and researchers. After all, we had a historic national crime spike in 2020 under AG Bill Barr, and red states with tough AGs/DAs consistently have the highest homicide rates: https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 24, 2022 12:48:15 PM
Bill -
A "progressive prosecutor" who reduces prison populations is more effective, in my view, in reducing crime than those who hold onto "tough on crime" beliefs that only send more and more people to prison and marginalizing them in future life prospects (employment, voting rights, etc). Prosecutors who reduce the impact on the criminal justice system on individuals (not prosecuting certain crimes, reducing felonies to misdemeanors) while maintaining community safety should be applauded - more and more prison use fail to stop the patterns and cycles that lead to crime in the first place.
Brett Miler
Posted by: Brett Miler | Sep 24, 2022 4:37:36 PM
Brett Miller,
“…while maintaining community safety…”
Therein lies the rub, eh?
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Sep 24, 2022 5:12:26 PM
This has all the markings of a “draw conclusions and then fit the facts around it” type “article.”
I wish legal academia put 1/10 of the effort into studying the impact of crime and their policies on communities and victims, both of color and otherwise.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Sep 24, 2022 5:18:16 PM
TarlsQtr -
I believe that more and more prison use for crimes ultimately is more expensive than community based alternatives. Prison may prevent some offenders from committing more and more crimes but ultimately if a person can be treated and assisted in the community, that should be the first choice instead of prison because ultimately I believe that prison is self perpetuating in terms of teaching criminals how to commit more crimes upon release. "Progressive Prosecutors" seem to have a greater understanding of this reality. Brett Miler
Posted by: Brett Miler | Sep 24, 2022 6:57:08 PM
This seems to be one of those bad uses of statistics studies.
If I understand the "data," based on the authors subjective assessment of whom is a progressive prosecutor in Florida, there are statistically insignificant differences in the various ways that individuals can end up with felony convictions (dismissal, diversion, reduced charges) that add up to a statistically significant difference in terms of total conviction rates. If none of the categories is statistically significant individually, that seems to indicate that it is hard to identify anything specifically that is making a difference.
Additionally, and this is true of most prosecutorial discretion studies, it is hard to isolate the outcome from the facts of cases. Dismissing a larger percentage of case or reducing charges in a larger number of cases might reflect poor decision-making by the prosecutor filing charges initially. That is a bad thing, not a good thing. The study also seems to look at total cases rather than category of cases. It matters which charges are being reduced and what charges are going into diversion. In find the "don't look anybody up" mindset to be just as misguided as the "lock them all up" mindset. (And I don't know that many prosecutors who have a lock them all up mindsets. Folks with that disposition tend to get swamped with trials and burn out very quickly.) I would want to see more detailed data to see that progressive prosecutors are just giving low-level offenders a second chance. If the difference is through better use of prosecutorial discretion, that is one thing. A prosecutor who doesn't want to convict anybody is another thing.
Posted by: tmm | Sep 26, 2022 3:45:41 PM
Doug --
I'll just bet that SF voters know more about the effectiveness of their own (former) "progressive prosecutor" than you do. Or I do. It is simply not the case that Academia Knows Best.
As to using crime stats as a metric: Yes, with caveats. The most important caveat is that crime is a lagging indicator of criminal justice policies. Lax policies produce more crime, but it shows up years after the policies are implemented; and tougher policies produce less crime, but again the effects are not clearly seen for several years.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 27, 2022 8:25:27 PM
On your first point, Bill, I do not think I have ever claimed "Academia Knows Best," but I am eager to explore your apparent view that local voters know best. Do you think various Florida Govs have been justifiably criticized for removing locally elected prosecutors? Do you think locally elected DAs and AGs have more legitimacy than unelected US Attorneys (and especially career folks throughout the Justice Department)?
As for your second point, based on your "lagging indicator" theory, would it thus be fair to blame AG Sessions as well as AG Barr (and Prez Trump et al.) for the current crime surge of 2020-2022 --- which we have been seeing nationwide and as much in red states/cities as in blue state/cities? Is it also then fair to blame Prez Reagan and GHWB for US crime peaking to historic levels in the mid 1980s through mid 1990s? To paraphrase Tarls, your crime stats comment has all the markings of a "draw conclusions and then fit the facts around it" type of claim.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 28, 2022 9:02:52 AM
Doug --
"On your first point, Bill, I do not think I have ever claimed "Academia Knows Best,"...
Not in those exact words, but your enthusiasm to use academic studies to "refute" the results of the SF recall tells a tale. I guess democracy really does stink when we have Harvard Law School to tell us what to do.
"Do you think various Florida Govs have been justifiably criticized for removing locally elected prosecutors?"
Since democratically enacted state law specifically enables the Governor to do just that, it can hardly serve as the premise for criticism. Whether it was a wise exercise of that legislatively-granted power is a different question, and the answer to that question is yes, since the ousted local prosecutor usurped legislative functions by effectively nullifying duly enacted statutes. He had no such power.
"Do you think locally elected DAs and AGs have more legitimacy than unelected US Attorneys (and especially career folks throughout the Justice Department)?"
That is far too broad a question to permit an intelligent answer. There are hundreds of elected prosecutors and hundreds (or thousands) of unelected ones. Some in each category are people of integrity and ability, and some in each category are crooks and cheaters (e.g., Mike Nifong, the elected DA at the heart of the Duke lacrosse scandal of 2006).
"As for your second point, based on your "lagging indicator" theory, would it thus be fair to blame AG Sessions as well as AG Barr (and Prez Trump et al.) for the current crime surge of 2020-2022..."
No it would not, because the lag is more than 3 to 5 years. It's more like 6 to 7 years. In addition, as I'm sure you know, the feds do a very, very small percentage of the criminal cases in this country. Most of them get done by state and local people like the DAs in crime-spiking cities such as NYC, Chicago, LA, Philly, Baltimore, St. Louis, etc. But those DAs are conservative Republicans, yes?................hello..............hello...........
"Is it also then fair to blame Prez Reagan and GHWB for US crime peaking to historic levels in the mid 1980s through mid 1990s?"
No, it's fair to blame the preceding generation's worth of soft-on-crime policies that Reagan and Bush created the reforms to correct. Precisely because of the lagging indicator effect, those policies did not show results until years later. (P.S. Crime started down after 1991, not the "mid 1990s").
Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 28, 2022 9:39:21 AM
Bill, if you think the crime lag is "more like 6-7 years," then how do you blame crime spikes on reform DAs when most were elected after 2016 (eg DA Krasner started in 2018; DA Gascon in 2020)? And what should we make, more generally, of the fact that "Thirteen of the 20 counties with the highest rates of firearm homicides from 2016 to 2020 were rural." SOURCE: A Year in Review 2020 GUN DEATHS IN THE U.S. The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2022-05/2020-gun-deaths-in-the-us-4-28-2022-b.pdf. Or, for some more real-world data:
"Lexington, Kentucky, which has set back-to-back murder records, has a homicide rate twice that of New York City and has a Republican mayor. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have Republican mayors, a Republican governor and murder rates that dwarf that of Los Angeles. Jacksonville was the murder capital of Florida in 2020 with its Republican mayor, governor and a stratospheric homicide rate that if it were matched in New York City would’ve added more than 1,000 murders that year." SOURCE: We have a murder problem in America — especially in red states, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3274797-we-have-a-murder-problem-in-america-especially-in-red-states/
This is basic crime data, Bill, not an academic study trying to claim that some concocted magical "crime lag" allows certain people to claim credit for distant crime declines and to deny responsibility for crime increases on their watch (but only with some mysterious time warp allowing the instant blaming of opponents). And violent crime remained quite high through 1996, at a much higher rate than throughout the 1970s (though 1991-92 arguably hit a peak depending on which metric is the focus). I know you are eager to contort all the facts to fit your desired narrative, but reality is messy.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 28, 2022 4:59:16 PM
Doug --
"Bill, if you think the crime lag is "more like 6-7 years," then how do you blame crime spikes on reform DAs when most were elected after 2016 (eg DA Krasner started in 2018; DA Gascon in 2020)?"
Because criminals are quick to spot a sucker when they see one.
The remainder of your remarks are nothing more than partisanship disguised as let-us-all-bow-down data. That is a characteristic academic trick -- academia being a partisan (specifically, Democratic) nest that, oddly for all the whining it does about democracy, doesn't look, and more importantly doesn't think, anything like America. Should I put up the stats on the partisan affiliation of law professors? My guess is that you already know them.
Still, I have to give you credit for not being totally taken in by academia. The main source you cite is not from a law review or an academic journal, but from -- my goodness! -- an OPINION PIECE in the very home of partisan bickering, "The Hill."
Far out!
Deny it or not, I'm quite sure you know this basic fact: Crime spiked nationwide for 30 years after 1960 when we bought the rehabilitative model and had no sentencing guidelines, and tanked over the next 20 when we got tougher and instituted guidelines (and MMs). If you choose to look away from FIFTY YEARS of experience to just take refuge in stock phrases like, "reality is messy," you of course can do that. Respectfully, I won't.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 28, 2022 5:22:56 PM
Lexington, KY does not have a Republican mayor.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Sep 28, 2022 7:42:40 PM
Again, Bill, you make up facts to serve your desired narrative. The rehabilitative model of corrections started prior to the Civil War with the development of the penitentiary and it picked up particular steam in the late 1800s and through the first part of the 1900s. The federal government embraced parole via a law enacted in 1910, and many state embraced parole and other rehabilitative laws/practices/ideas around the same time. We did see a crime spike in the 1920s (though I think that was primarily the result of the noble experiment of prohibition), but then the next one did not start until the 1970s around the time the so-called modern "war on drugs" got going.
Can you provide any cite or data, Bill, to support your ahistorical contention that it was only after the 1960 when we "bought the rehabilitative model"? (In addition, states started adopting guideline-like determinate sentencing structures in the 1970s and yet crime kept increasing through early 1990s.) You have your nice narrative, it just does not match up with the facts.
More importantly, you now say that increases in crime does not have a lag "Because criminals are quick to spot a sucker when they see one." Again, that gets us back to Trump and Barr apparently being crime suckers who could and should be held accountable for the national crime wave of 2020 --- a crime increase that was truly national and was comparable in every part of the country with no real significant differences by region (other than the fact that red states typically have much higher baseline crime levels to begin with).
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 28, 2022 8:01:09 PM
"Can you provide any cite or data, Bill, to support your ahistorical contention that it was only after the 1960 when we "bought the rehabilitative model"?"
But I never said that it was ONLY after 1960 that we bought the rehabilitative model, so your whole attack falls apart. And you conspicuously, if quite correctly, don't deny that the rehabilitative model did indeed predominate in the crime-happy generation after 1960.
"(In addition, states started adopting guideline-like determinate sentencing structures in the 1970s and yet crime kept increasing through early 1990s.)"
Very nice piece of slick defense lawyering. HOW MANY states adopted guidelines before the feds did in the SRA? Two? Three? C'mon.
You and others in the "criminals-are-just-victims" contingent argue that getting tougher didn't account much if at all for the massive reduction in crime for the generation that followed our decision to do that, but no informed person actually believes it (including, I strongly suspect, you).
Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 28, 2022 10:43:45 PM
To add a bit:
"More importantly, you now say that increases in crime does not have a lag "Because criminals are quick to spot a sucker when they see one."
THAT IS A DISTORTION OF WHAT I SAID. Making up words to jam in my mouth makes responsible debate impossible.
What I said, picking up on YOUR REFERENCE TO TWO DISCRETE AND SPECIFIC JURISDICTIONS, Philly and LA, with Krasner and Gascon, respectively, was that in those instances, where two pro-criminal, ideologically extreme lawyers became DAs in one-party districts, crime increased in short order (which you don't deny) "Because criminals are quick to spot a sucker when they see one."
You now want to balloon those exceptional and exceptionally bad DAs in two ciites to make it appear as if I contradicted my broader observation about what 50 years' of experience nationwide has taught us.
Yeah, well that might work in a ninth grade debate. I haven't been in ninth grade for a while.
P.S. Here's a story about how Krasner's office was intentionally deceitful and dishonest with the court in attempting to get leniency for bloody murderer. Care to defend this kind of lawyering? I'm all ears. https://www.crimeandconsequences.blog/?p=7555
Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 28, 2022 11:12:41 PM
As you keep changing your various tunes, Bill, the key point here is that crime facts do not neatly support your narrative. There is a lag, except when it serves your narrative to say there isn’t. The fact that crime is higher and/or increasing more in places without reform prosecutors is ignored. That we had the rehab model of sentencing and corrections for more than half a century with low crime does not matter. And the highest and most crime-increasing years of modern times was during the Reagan/Bush years with the war on drugs ascending.
But all those facts (and many others) do not matter because you have your invented narrative that toughness “works.” You have clearly learned from some academics how to not let facts get I the way of your theory. And I should remember that citing more crime facts to you is of little use because it is only your narrative that matters.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 28, 2022 11:40:36 PM
And, Bill, even though I am doubting ever more whether you actually believe in facts or academic research or even honest representation, here is a leading 1996 article noting that 10 states had adopted some form of determinate sentencing before the feds (and finding no clear impact on crime from these reforms):
DETERMINATE SENTENCING AND ABOLISHING PAROLE: THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS ON PRISONS AND CRIME
THOMAS B. MARVELL,CARLISLE E. MOODY
First published in the Journal Criminology, February 1996
Abstract
We estimate the impact of determinate sentencing laws (DSLs) on prison commitments, prison populations, and Uniform Crime Report crime rates. Ten states enacted these laws between 1976 and 1984; all abolished parole and most established presumptive sentences. The research uses a multiple time-series design that, among other benefits, controls for national trends and facilitates the use of control variables. We found that DSLs are clearly associated with prison population growth in only one state, Indiana, and with major reductions in two, Minnesota and Washington. The remaining laws show no evidence of increasing populations and may have reduced them somewhat. The estimated impacts on commitments are similarly varied. There is little or no evidence that DSLs affect crime. Earlier studies evaluating individual DSLs are often criticized for poor research designs, and our findings support the criticisms.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 29, 2022 11:40:47 AM
Tarls, I just had a chance to fact-check the state of the mayor of Lexington KY. According to this Politico article, "Mayor Linda Gorton is a registered Republican": https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/08/linda-gorton-kentucky-politics-523875
That said, this Ballotpedia entry adds some nuance: "Mayoral elections in Lexington are nonpartisan. Gorton is a registered Republican; however, according to the Lexington Herald Leader, she says she views herself as an independent." https://ballotpedia.org/Linda_Gorton
I get your point/clarification that is it inaccurate to say Lexington "has a Republican mayor," even though it does seem accurate to say it has a mayor who is a registered Republican.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 29, 2022 1:38:32 PM
