Working Paper: NBER ID: w28600
Authors: Amanda Y. Agan; Jennifer L. Doleac; Anna Harvey
Abstract: Communities across the United States are reconsidering the public safety benefits of prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, yet there is little empirical evidence to inform policy in this area. In this paper we report the first estimates of the causal effects of misdemeanor prosecution on defendants' subsequent criminal justice involvement. We leverage the as-if random assignment of nonviolent misdemeanor cases to Assistant District Attorneys (ADAs) who decide whether a case should be prosecuted in the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts. These ADAs vary in the average leniency of their prosecution decisions. We find that, for the marginal defendant, nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense leads to a 53% reduction in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint, and to a 60% reduction in the number of new criminal complaints, over the next two years. These local average treatment effects are largest for defendants without prior criminal records, suggesting that averting criminal record acquisition is an important mechanism driving our findings. We also present evidence that a recent policy change in Suffolk County imposing a presumption of nonprosecution for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses had similar beneficial effects, decreasing the likelihood of subsequent criminal justice involvement.
Keywords: misdemeanor prosecution; criminal justice; nonviolent offenses
JEL Codes: K14; K4
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| acting like the most lenient ADAs (K40) | reduction in criminal justice involvement for nonviolent misdemeanor defendants (K14) |
| nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense (K40) | averting criminal record acquisition (K42) |
| prosecution decision (K40) | influences defendants' subsequent behavior (K40) |
| recent policy change in Suffolk County (R28) | decrease in the likelihood of subsequent criminal justice involvement (K14) |
| nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense (K40) | reduction in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint (K40) |
| nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense (K40) | reduction in the number of new criminal complaints (K42) |