Charge Departures during a Time of Social Distancing and Unrest

• In Event: The Impact of COVID 19 on Courts and Case Processing

Abstract

This study examines whether social distancing mandates and incidents related to social unrest (e.g., race-based protests) were associated with charge changes between the time of arrest and prosecution among justice-involved individuals. Furthermore, we test whether these effects were consistent across all individuals or limited to only those who were residents of the sample jurisdiction. We model two dependent variables: (1) retaining or dismissing charges, and (2) changes in severity between the arresting charge and the charge brought forth by the prosecutor. Hierarchal Linear Modeling (HLM) was used to create models incorporating individual and offense characteristics (level-1), contextual indices of suspected individuals' home block groups and offense block groups (level-2), and the city where the individual resided (level-3). We include measures related to whether there was a recent social unrest event, as well as whether the offense occurred pre-/during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings show that departures in charges were temporally impacted, as well as associated with individual, offense, and contextual characteristics. These findings highlight that charging decisions are impacted by social climate; however, downward departures are not consistent across all people, offenses, and places. A discussion of implications stemming from these findings are discussed.

Authors

• Rebecca Headley Konkel, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

• Danielle M. Romain Dagenhardt, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee