In Search for Equity, Brooklyn DA’s Office Takes Important Step Towards Understanding Successes and Failures

By Kailey Spencer, Research Associate

 The systematic analysis of racial and ethnic disparities in key outcomes is essential for understanding policy impacts—and should be replicated by other prosecutor’s offices

Prosecutors wield significant power and discretion within the criminal legal system. They determine the charges on a case, dictate offers in plea bargaining, and—through bail and sentencing recommendations—exert a tremendous amount of influence over whether people are incarcerated while facing trial. Given the scope of prosecutorial authority, understanding how race and ethnicity play a role in determining outcomes in their offices is critically important for identifying and correcting racial inequities in the criminal legal system. The research presented in ISLG’s newly released report, Justice in Decision-Making: Studying Racial & Ethnic Disparities in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, represents a crucial first step towards developing a more holistic understanding of where racial and ethnic disparities exist in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s (DA’s) Office. This report is the culmination of a years-long partnership between ISLG and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and highlights the value of these types of collaborations and what can be learned from them.

Lending analytical support to Brooklyn DA’s Justice 2020 Initiative

Since taking office in 2018, Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez has made great strides in creating a model of progressive prosecution with the Justice 2020 Initiative, a roadmap of policies and practices that adhere to a core set of principles related to fairness, safety, and transparency. DA Gonzalez recognized that robust research and analytics is critical to advancing the racially equitable policies and practices envisioned in the plan. To facilitate this, in 2018, the DA opened the office up to a partnership with ISLG in order to build its internal data and analytic capacity and conduct a study of racial and ethnic disparities.

This study focused on several points where decisions are directly made or heavily influenced by the Brooklyn DA’s office, ranging from initial case acceptance and charging decisions to plea bargaining and sentencing. Researchers at ISLG analyzed outcomes by race and ethnicity for all 256,078 cases screened by the office between 2016 and mid-2019, as well as all 266,098 cases disposed by the Kings County Criminal Court and/or Supreme Court during that same period.

Uncovering the varying patterns in racial and ethnic disparities

The research in this report did not find consistent disparities across all decision points, an indication that the early work of the DA and his predecessor, DA Kenneth Thompson, is having an impact. With that said, disparities remained at several key points and were particularly notable for specific offense types and charges, pointing to where the office should turn attention to in future efforts. Broadly speaking, ISLG found that relative to white people, Black and Hispanic people were more likely to exit the system—largely through declinations to prosecute or dismissals—as their cases progress. However, for those who remained, their outcomes were harsher at certain stages in the process or for certain types of crimes, such as being less likely to secure a reduction in charge severity through plea offers. The figure below summarizes significant differences in outcomes between white people and Asian, Black, and Hispanic people, after accounting for other demographics, criminal history, and case characteristics. Further detail on the findings for different offense types and charges can be found in the full report.

Applying findings to assess policy changes and identify areas where further improvement is needed

The study time period overlapped with existing and developing reforms—making findings valuable for identifying successful policies and for assessing how reforms influence disparities. ISLG’s close working relationship with the DA’s office allowed us to tailor our analyses and our interpretation of the findings to ensure that the findings are meaningful and actionable to their work.

For example, findings from the report suggest that a policy enacted by the office in 2017, which required ADA’s to decline to prosecute theft of service cases—commonly referred to as fare evasion or “turnstile jumping” in the NYC subway system—was successful in eliminating disparities in conviction rates that were present in earlier years. ISLG found that, in 2016 prior to the reform, Black and Hispanic people charged with theft of services were significantly more likely to be convicted than White people accused of the same offense. By 2018, a year after the policy was imposed, disparities had dissipated. These findings provide evidence that this strategy was successful in addressing the inequitable outcomes and can provide support should the DA’s office decide to expand these efforts to other charges where disparities are observed.

This research also provides a baseline against which the office can assess the impacts of new policies enacted after the end of the study timeframe in mid-2019. For example, we observed disparities in rates of post-arraignment detention, with Black and Hispanic individuals more likely than white individuals to be detained post-arraignment, largely due to differences in rates of being assigned and posting bail. In future research, the office can explore the effects of both office- and state-level reforms on these disparities, including the DA’s office’s expanded policy limiting the use of bail, particularly for low-level offenses, and the subsequent legislative bail policy enacted at the state level in 2020, which eliminates bail for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies. Continued monitoring of post-arraignment detention outcomes will allow the DA’s office to assess whether these new reforms were able to reduce the disparities we  observed, or, if not, will demonstrate that further intervention may be needed.

A call to action for prosecutor’s offices

The partnership between ISLG and the Brooklyn DA’s office has provided important insights into racial and ethnic disparities in prosecutorial decision-making and case outcomes that can serve as a model for other prosecutors around the country. While the report demonstrates that there is more work to be done to eliminate disparities, it also highlights areas of success and underscores the office’s commitment to increased public transparency. Other prosecutor’s offices should use this success as inspiration to take up the mantle in their own jurisdictions and pursue similar partnerships with researchers to aide in their efforts to achieve more equitable prosecution.