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Time: 10:43 pm

Results for felony arrests

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Author: Huenke, Charles J., Jr.

Title: Delaware Felony Case Processing An Analysis of 2006 Adult Arrests

Summary: When one looks at criminal justice planning documents that intend to inform us about the results of laws and polices we often see the funnel flowchart showing the steps felony arrestees follow as their cases progress through the criminal justice system. Correctly, this chart shows that many cases fall by the wayside not resulting in a felony conviction or a prison term. Interestingly this chart has not changed since the early 1970’s when it was originally developed for the old U.S. Department of Justice Law Enforcement Administration Assistance (LEAA) agency (now the DOJ Office of Programs). The reason the chart has not changed is that no one could credibly put numbers on the page. The false assumption that someone could push a computer button and produce these results cast light on our then sadly incomplete, disconnected and non-standardized criminal justice information systems. Over the years, counties, states and the federal government have poured billions of dollars into systematic efforts to improve our criminal justice information systems to ensure identification (fingerprints), develop and maintain law files (standardization of legal terms), fleshing out sentencing orders (measure of punishment and surveillance), and linking each offender’s arrest with the end result including release from prison (system integration). Delaware participated in the 2010 effort hosted by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and administered by the Justice Research and Statistics Association to test the hypothesis that after all these criminal justice system improvements we could “push the button” for results. The answer is we and the four other participating states got viable results; the sticky point is the button got stuck. We were able to produce statewide numbers for the first time for all 2006 felony arrestees in the Delaware and track them successfully to either falling out of the felony part of the criminal justice system or being sentenced – sometimes to prison. Historically this is a remarkable feat. While the data exist that allows this analysis, which is good news, it still takes a very significant amount of work of knowledgeable researchers to put it together. We now have viable results tracking felons though the criminal justice system. Following a brief discussion of some of the issues with the criminal justice databases, the second part of this study provides step by step details for the flow of felons through the criminal justice system. On the following page a brief summary of these results are presented. For instance, 43 percent of the arrested felons are convicted of a felony, while overall 69 percent of the felony arrestees are convicted of either a felony or a misdemeanor. For all of these convictions, only 11 percent are sentenced to prison for terms of one year or more; however 47 percent are sentenced to some type of incarceration (including prison, jail or time served). The severity of the crime makes a difference. For those felons being arrested for violent crimes and convicted, 40 percent are sentenced to prison, and when all types of incarceration are considered the rate is 80 percent. Interestingly, 50 percent of the felony arrestees have two or more prior felony arrests in their criminal histories.

Details: Dover, DE: Delaware Statistical Analysis Center, 2011. 40p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 4, 2011 at: http://sac.omb.delaware.gov/publications/documents/DelawareFelony2006Jan142011.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: United States

URL: http://sac.omb.delaware.gov/publications/documents/DelawareFelony2006Jan142011.pdf

Shelf Number: 122976

Keywords:
Case Processing
Felony Arrests
Felony Offenders
Sentencing (Delaware)