Same city, different prosecutors, different outcomes

Moskos Uncategorized 2025-09-14 | 0

A while back I was (and still am) a bit shocked at the massive differences between case outcomes in New York City and the rest of New York State. Same laws. Different jurisdictions. In New York City, in 2024, 64% of adult felony cases are not prosecuted or dismissed. Outside NYC it is 18%.

Data comes from here. I’m combining the three categories of DA Declined to Prosecute, Dismissed-Not ACD, Dismissed-ACD. (ACD is adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. And “an ACD is Almost As Good As a Straight Dismissal,” says one Manhattan lawyer’s website.)

Odds a felony arrest ends in a conviction are is 32% in NYC and 67% outside of it. Odds a person arrested gets sentenced to jail or prison time (more than time served) is 8% in NYC and 25% outside of NYC. (FWIW the odds a convicted person gets jail or prison is higher in the city, I assume because to this level of actually being convicted in NYC, the crime is much more serious.)

For misdemeanors, the non prosecution rate is 79% in the city and 31% outside. 1% of arrests get jail time in NYC, 5% outside the city. Basically nobody (0.1%) arrested for a misdemeanor goes to prison (n = 218 out of 216,000 arrests statewide in 2024).

This is very much related to bail and discovery reform. There’s a great article by Hannah Meyers about this. Those laws made prosecution much less likely. But it’s a state law. Now the obligations may be different in the city. Or the resources. But the largest part in prosecutorial outcomes, I figure, is the prosecutor.

As a natural experiment, NYC has 5 counties and 5 prosecutors. How convenient! If I had to guess how “tough” a prosecutor is based on reputation, I’d rank order:
Staten Island (Richmond County), Queens, Manhattan (New York County), Brooklyn (Kings County), the Bronx.

And the data supports this. (These number are a combination of the rows [see at bottom] of “Other Favorable,” “Covered by Another Case,” and “Convicted-Sentenced”)

Non prosecuted felonies— Staten Island: 42%. Queens: 54%. Manhattan: 59%. Brooklyn: 69%. Bronx: 75%.

Non-prosecuted misdemeanors— Staten Island: 56%. Queens: 73%. Manhattan: 77%. Brooklyn: 83%. Bronx: 84%.

Felony convictions rates— Outside NYC: 67%. New York City: 32%.
Staten Island: 49%. Queens: 45%. Manhattan: 35%. Brooklyn: 25%. Bronx: 22%

Misdemeanor convictions rates— Outside NYC: 52%. New York City: 18%.
Staten Island: 42%. Queens: 27%. Manhattan: 17%. Brooklyn: 14%. Bronx: 12%.

What does this mean? Well it certainly supports the conclusion that the choice of prosecutor matters. Or maybe cops arrest a lot more innocent people in the Bronx compared to Staten Island much less outside NYC. Unlikely. Now what the impact of these prosecutorial choices is harder to measure. But I think it matters. Hannah Meyer’s argues that there is a basic moral unfairness to this: “By forcing local prosecutors to make decisions around expedience and exigence rather than around considerations of justice, the state legislation has harmed overall fairness to the people of New York, whom district attorneys represent.”

She’s talking specifically about the burden of Discovery Reform, which may indeed be greater in NYC that outside. But what about the lack of justice in the Bronx compared to Queens? That’s on the prosecutor, right?

(Side note: For the first time, I used ChatGPT to make charts. Saved me a lot of time. Best charts ever? Maybe not. But then neither are mine. Here is the same data on fewer charts.)