Weekend Reads | Do Progressive Prosecutors Increase Crime?

by Kevin Schofield

This weekend's read is a new article published in the journal Criminology and Public Policy looking at whether crime goes up in the years after a county first elects a chief prosecutor who espouses progressive policies. For many years, conservative politicians and pundits have claimed that so-called "soft on crime" prosecutors have led to an increase in crime, but there hasn't been reliable data to back up that assertion. This new article examines the largest 100 counties in the United States, identifies 38 that elected a progressive prosecutor at some point between 2000 and 2020, and compares what happened to crime in those counties to counties with only prosecutors who followed more traditional "tough on crime" policies.

There are many challenges with designing this kind of study. First, how do we define a "progressive" prosecutor? The authors (all faculty in university criminology departments) came up with a list of nine policy areas and 29 specific policy implementation ideas across the nine areas. Any prosecutor who campaigned on ideas related to at least six policy areas qualified as "progressive" (the researchers went back after the fact and repeated their analysis with the threshold set at five and seven, with largely the same results). Policy areas included: reducing mass incarceration; alternatives to criminal justice interventions; removing "poverty traps," such as cash bail; reducing inequities for immigrants and People of Color; and decriminalizing youth.

Second, what kind of crime do we want to examine for a link to progressive policies? The researchers settled on three: violent crime, property crime, and total crime. It's worth noting that property crimes vastly outnumber violent crimes (the researchers found that 85% of all crimes were property crimes), so any change to the amount of property crime has an outsized impact on total crime.

Third, what kind of an impact could a prosecutor have on crime, when total crime decreased by 45% between 2000 and 2020? In this context, the impact of progressive policies might look like a smaller decrease in crime compared with other jurisdictions, rather than an increase in the absolute amount of crime.

And finally, what is the theoretical connection between policy and crime? The authors suggest three competing ideas:

• Deterrence and incapacitation: "Tough on crime" policies might deter individuals from committing crimes, and those behind bars are not able to commit additional crimes; conversely, "soft on crime" policies would reduce the deterrent, and reduced incarceration would put more potential criminals back on the street.
• Coercion mobility: "Tough on crime" policies might increase crime by destabilizing families and communities, forcing more people into poverty and living conditions that might drive them to commit crimes; conversely, "soft on crime" policies might reduce crime by keeping families and social structures stable.
• Structural crime: Crime is inherently structural, and neither "tough" nor "soft" policies affect crime rates.

After crunching all the numbers, the researchers found that from 2000 to 2020, total crime decreased by 47.5% in counties that had never had a progressive prosecutor, and 42% in counties that at some point elected a progressive one; in other words, crime decreased a lot everywhere, but slightly less in counties with a progressive prosecutor. Drilling down, they found that property crime followed the same trends, while there was no significant difference in violent crimes between progressive and traditional prosecutors. To be clear, violent crime is higher in counties that at some point elected a progressive prosecutor, but that was true before they took office, while they were in office, and after they left office.

Of the three theories mentioned before, the researchers suggest the evidence somewhat supports the "deterrent/incapacitation" view: Progressive policies may slightly reduce the deterrent value of prosecution for property crimes or put people back on the streets who might commit additional property crimes. But even if true, the impact is small, too small to reverse the overwhelmingly downward trend in property crime rates. Additionally, there is no evidence that progressive policies lead to an increase in violent crime: In the years immediately following a new progressive prosecutor, violent crime rates may go up or down a bit, but there is no clear pattern.

Their analysis of property crime rates seem to show that it takes a few years for the impact of progressive policies on property crime to "ramp up." Also, after about 10 years, the impact plateaus, though it's unclear whether that is an effect of the policies themselves, or because progressive prosecutors tend not to stay in office that long.

There are a few obvious weaknesses of the study. First, it only studied the 100 largest counties, which have significantly more dense urban areas than the rest of the U.S. counties. That prevents us from knowing whether these results also hold true for smaller, rural counties. Second, prosecutors were categorized as "progressive" (or not) based upon the policies they campaigned on, not necessarily those that they implemented once in office.

Nevertheless, there are some strong public policy learnings here. It's been documented that progressive policies have begun to reduce the impact of mass incarceration in the United States, especially on racial minorities. Yet the evidence doesn't support the argument that this has led to an increase in violent crime, though it does support the notion that it has led to a small increase — in relative terms — in property crime. The researchers suggest that in the end, policymakers need to make a hard choice: "Whether a 7% higher rate of index crime (driven by property crimes) due to the installment of progressive prosecutors is a worthwhile tradeoff in exchange for possible reductions in the harms of racialized mass incarceration is ultimately a decision for local officials and the constituencies they represent, as policy decisions nearly always have tradeoffs."

Do progressive prosecutors increase crime? A quasi-experimental analysis of crime rates in the 100 largest counties, 2000—2020

Featured image via ARMMY PICCA/Shutterstock.com.