This month, JMI released the first research brief of a three-year study funded by Arnold Ventures, examining whether decisions to decline certain types of low-level offenses affect public safety and disparities within the criminal legal system. This brief summarizes the first year of study findings, which focus on identifying which offenses are most commonly declined and the policy decisions affecting these declinations.
JMI’s study focuses on three prosecutors’ offices that have implemented charge acceptance policies, either formal or informal. The offices are diverse in terms of the populations they serve, the volume of work, and the political environments in which they work– one small, densely populated urban county, a second larger urban county, and a third office serving a smaller population within a county containing both rural and urban areas.
The study found that the type of declination policy (formal or informal) did not seem to influence whether declinations increased; in all three offices, declinations of specific misdemeanor case types increased immediately following the implementation of the charging policy, whether formal, informal, or general.
An unexpected finding was that, contrary to expectations, the most formal of the policies observed did not have the longest lasting effect. Instead, both the formal policy and general guidance yielded initial increases in declinations in their counties that then steadily declined over time, while the county that implemented an informal policy maintained high declination rates.
The cause of these findings is not yet known and prompts further inquiry of internal or external dynamics affecting outcomes in response to policies. Over the course of the next two years, JMI’s analyses will delve deeper into these questions and will also focus on how different factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, and number of prior offenses affect declinations. In addition, JMI will collect data and conduct analyses to understand what effect declinations have on public safety as well as racial and ethnic disparity. The results of these analyses will be reported in subsequent research briefs. JMI is grateful to Arnold Ventures for the funding of this study. The team looks forward to continuing the study and discovering more about the effects of policy decisions on declinations and public safety.
The full research brief can be accessed below.
