Economics of Crime: Arrest & Sentencing

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel shows how the sentencing decisions of various criminal justice actors affect outcomes for defendants.  

The first study examines the effect of replacing arrests with criminal citations on court outcomes and future criminal charges. Using web-scraped Maryland court records, it implements a difference-in-discontinuities design that exploits a January 1, 2013 policy shock encouraging criminal citations for low-level offenses.  Estimates suggest the policy shock increased citations and decreased pretrial detention. Estimates also suggest it decreased guilty pleas and increased failures-to-appear among first-time defendants, but had little effect on recidivism. 

The second and third studies look at the effects of prosecutors and defense attorneys in the sentencing process. The second shows have prosecutorial discretion impacts racial disparities in court outcomes.  The First Step Act of 2018 ended federal prosecutors' ability to stack multiple 924(c) firearms charges within a single case, practically eliminating the use of 25-year mandatory minimums among defendants with no prior 924(c) convictions. Using United States Sentencing Commission data covering fiscal years 2014–2024, the study estimates the impact of the reform using a difference-in-differences design. It also examines changes in Black-White sentencing disparities after the reform, and uses longitudinal decomposition methods to reveals whether prosecutors and judges shifted discretion to other mechanisms following the reform. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about mandatory minimums, prosecutorial discretion, and racial equity in federal sentencing. 

The third study looks at how defense attorney quality impacts court outcomes.  Using administrative data from North Carolina and the quasi-random assignment of court-appointed attorneys to cases, it estimates the quality of private attorneys providing public defense.  Results reveal significant variation in attorney quality as measured by the likelihood of case dismissal, incarceration, probation, and pleading guilty. Using a statewide hourly pay reduction that only affected a subset of attorneys, it also finds that a 33% attorney pay decrease leads to adverse outcomes for defendants, comparable to a 1 SD decrease in attorney quality.  

Finally, the fourth study investigates how raising the standard of proof affects charging and sentencing outcomes. Exploiting a Supreme Court decision that increased the evidentiary burden for sentencing enhancements, it documents a sharp decline in enhancement rates. While this change should mechanically reduce average sentence lengths, average sentences instead increase. It finds no evidence of prosecutorial adjustment across 13 charging and bargaining outcomes. By contrast, judges respond heterogeneously: more lenient judges increase sentence lengths, while stricter judges reduce them, compressing the distribution of sentences.

Policy Area

• Crime, Justice, and Drugs

Chair

• Michael LaForest-Tucker, George Washington University

Discussants

• Alissa Julia Skog, University of California, Berkeley

• Jillian Beaugez Carr, Purdue University

Organizer

• Michael LaForest-Tucker, George Washington University

Individual Presentations

• The Effects of Citations in Lieu of Arrests: Evidence from Maryland - Presenting Author: Guthrie Scoblic, University of Missouri

• Publicly Contracted Private Counsel: Defense Attorney Quality, Pay, and Defendant Outcomes - Presenting Author: Taylor Jordan Landon, Brigham Young University

• The Unintended Consequences of Raising the Standard of Proof in Criminal Sentencing - Presenting Author: Spencer Cooper, University of Connecticut

• Truth in Sentencing: Recidivism, Labor Force Re-entry and the Well-Being of Children and Families - Presenting Author: Bezankeng Njinju, University of Wisconsin-Madison