Flutterby™! : Not prosecuting leads to lower recidivism rates

A New Study Reveals that Not Prosecuting People for Nonviolent Misdemeanors May Actually Reduce Crime

In a new study we consider this question, using data from Suffolk County, Massachusetts (where Boston is located). We show that prosecuting minor offenses like the ones described above actually does more harm than good. Scaling back the prosecution of nonviolent misdemeanors leads to an increase, not decrease, in public safety.

How did we reach this conclusion? In our study we exploit a feature of nearly all criminal justice contexts: what happens to your case depends a bit on luck. As a defendant, you might get lucky and be assigned a lenient prosecutor instead of a harsh one. In Suffolk County, cases are randomly assigned to prosecutors, and those prosecutors vary in their leniency. Using rich administrative data from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office on future criminal complaints, we follow the lucky defendants over time to see what happens to them, relative to the people who were unlucky and got assigned to a less lenient prosecutor.