Case Dismissal Differences by Victim’s Race/Ethnicity

Case Dismissal Differences by Victim’s Race or Ethnicity

The State Attorney’s Office does not file charges in every case that is referred to it for prosecution. Even after an arrest is made, a prosecutor can decline to file charges. Additionally, if our office does file charges, we can later dismiss those charges.

These declinations and dismissals occur for a variety of reasons: discovery of new evidence, witnesses changing testimony, witnesses who refuse to cooperate or cannot be contacted, victims deciding they don’t want to go forward, and legal issues such as the admissibility of evidence or the appropriateness of a search or traffic stop.

As we make every effort to support victims of crime, it is important that a victim’s race or ethnicity does not impact the outcome of their case. The rate of how often cases are dismissed should be similar for victims of all racial and ethnic groups.

To ensure we are achieving that objective, our office can use the data from our new Data Dashboard to track whether the dismissal rate for each group is close to the overall average of all cases.

What does the data story tell us?

Over the past three years, case dismissals involving Hispanic victims have stayed quite close to the overall average, with Hispanic victims being only 1% more likely to have their cases dismissed. However, Black victims have been 6% more likely than average to have their cases dismissed compared to the overall average.


Determining the causes

The discrepancy between Black victims and overall victims is an example of a discrepancy that our office likely would not have noticed until we created our Data Dashboard. The numbers are not strikingly high, so individual prosecutors may not have spotted the issue. But now, looking at the data, we can see the discrepancy does exist, and that gives us the opportunity to analyze it and consider ways to address it.

Higher dismissal rates for cases with Black victims may indicate that additional efforts need to be made to engage Black victims, identify obstacles to Black victims seeking justice in the criminal justice system, and develop solutions.

Ultimately, a prosecutor should only move forward with a case if he or she believes the defendant can be proven guilty and prosecution is in the interest of public safety—because of this, sometimes dismissing a case is the right decision. Each case must be reviewed individually, and decisions should be based on that specific situation. However, a strong prosecutor’s office will also look at the larger trends that show through the data and take steps to achieve its overall goal of fair outcomes for everyone.

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