Trends in Case and Defendant Characteristics, and Court Processing and Outcomes, of Prosecuted Arrests for Misdemeanor and Lesser-Severity Offenses in New York City

• NCJ Number: 209014
• Author(s): Freda F. Solomon Ph.D.
• Date Published: December 2001
• Length: 81 pages
• Corporate Author: New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc
• Sale Source: New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research); Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: For the executive summary, see NCJ-209013.

Annotation

In order to determine the change in case and defendant characteristics, criminal court processing, and case outcomes in nonfelony arrests prosecuted in New York City's criminal courts under changing police resources and policies, this study examined relevant datasets before and after the changes.

Abstract

The study compared data from two points in time almost a decade apart, 1989 and the third quarter of 1998. Data from these two time periods permitted an analysis of arrests, court-processing, and case-outcome patterns under significant changes in criminal justice policy in New York City. In 1989, the focus of policing was on the disruption of street-level drug markets and associated violent and weapons crimes. These efforts resulted in felony arrests. In contrast, in 1998 New York City had a criminal justice policy characterized by strategic enforcement of quality-of-life offenses, which frequently involved arrests on misdemeanor charges. The study found more than twice as many arrests for nonfelony offenses in 1998 compared with 1989; and there were changes in the charge-severity distribution of prosecuted summary-arrests for nonfelony offenses. Further, the crime characteristics of prosecuted nonfelony arrests were different between the two periods, with varying proportions of crime types and different mixes of charges within some crime categories. Also, changes in enforcement strategies and the resulting arrest patterns led to differences in defendant characteristics in the areas of criminal record, age, ethnicity, and sex. Court appearances at which cases were completed and the types of dispositions also differed in the two time periods; and there were differences in the patterns of change between arrest and conviction charge severities in cases where defendants were convicted. There were differences in the two time periods in the use of jail sentences for cases in which defendants were convicted. All of these findings are discussed in detail in this report, and their link to changes in criminal justice policy and resource allocation is discussed. 49 tables and 1 figure