Bifurcated Probation and Punishment for Gun Crime

• In Event: Criminal Justice Response to Gun Violence: Programs, Policies, and Punishments

Abstract

The ‘Safe Neighborhoods Reform Act’ was passed by the Illinois state legislature in January 2018. This law bifurcates subpopulations convicted of gun possession based on their criminal history. Those with no history may be offered probation, while those with multiple serious convictions face harsher prison terms. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find legislative reform to have intensified a pre-intervention upward trend in the use of probationary sanctions for first-time gun possession. It also increased the length of probationary terms served by this subgroup, while decreasing their predicted prison terms. Surprisingly, this reform also decreased the predicted punishment term for gun possession recidivists sentenced to prison. These analyses also revealed an earlier, unexpected discontinuity in the predicted length of both types of punishment in December 2016. At this time, newly-elected State’s Attorney’s Kim Foxx reduced routine managerial oversight of prosecutorial plea bargaining negotiations in individual criminal courtrooms. As with legislative reform, this new organizational policy increased the length of probationary sentencing for first-time gun possession while decreasing the predicted length of prison terms for both subpopulations. In sum, this two-fold discontinuity offers a unique opportunity to quantify the relative effect of internal, organizational factors versus external, legislative factors in sentencing outcomes.

Author

• Kyla Bourne, University of Chicago