(Dis)order in the Court: Examining Neighborhood Disorder Prosecutions in Miami-Dade County

Petersen, Nick; Omori, Marisa; Lautenschlager, Rachel

doi:10.1080/07418825.2018.1523448

Cited by 11 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Prosecutors typically rely on information provided by police after an arrest, further solidifying the relationship between police and prosecutors (Petersen et al, 2018). They may accept certain cases knowing they can be dismissed later without having the same negative effect on their relationships with police officers as the rejection of charges (Davis, 1998).…”

Section: Discussion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most notably, it can be difficult for prosecutors to uphold the law by pursuing every prosecutable low-level case that is referred to them while still reserving sufficient office resources to address more serious offenses (Blumberg, 1967; Myers & Hagan, 1979). Additionally, police referrals to prosecutors’ offices signals that police believe formal charges and punishment to be appropriate for even low-level offenses (Davis, 1998; Petersen et al, 2018). However, to streamline case processing, the State Attorney can set policies that encourage the use of alternative dispositions for these cases to improve efficiency.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining the Gap Between Prosecutor Attitudes and Decisions: Case Prioritization Through Case Elimination Mechanisms in Driving With a Suspended License Cases

Arndt

2021

Criminal Justice Review

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Prosecutors are granted considerable discretion, particularly for misdemeanors. The current study assesses the processing of misdemeanor driving with suspended license (DWSL) cases. Using interview and administrative data from a Florida jurisdiction, the study first examines prosecutorial attitudes about case elimination mechanisms—declination, dismissal, and diversion—then evaluates the extent to which prosecutors’ views about handling DWSL cases and racial disparities in the legal system are reflective of case processing outcomes. Results indicate prosecutors view case prioritization as important, though it is unclear how they achieve it. Despite a reluctance to decline cases when the elements of an offense are supported by evidence, prosecutors acknowledge they cannot pursue all offenses if there is only marginal public safety return. Contemporaneous administrative data show that DWSL cases were routinely pursued in 2017: nearly all DWSL cases were filed, a third were dismissed, and 11% were diverted. Regression analysis also demonstrates that prosecutors’ views on racial and ethnic disparities are somewhat aligned with the case processing decisions for DWSL cases processed in 2017. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for prosecutorial policy, practice, and the effects of prosecutorial discretion for low-level cases on communities.

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Section: Discussion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the Gap Between Prosecutor Attitudes and Decisions: Case Prioritization Through Case Elimination Mechanisms in Driving With a Suspended License Cases

Arndt

2021

Criminal Justice Review

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“…In many cities, drug enforcement has explicitly targeted marginalized spaces and people, including “skid row” areas and other economically and racially segregated “ghettos” (Beckett et al 2005; Lynch et al 2013). Given that much of police work is spatially oriented, and laws governing drug and order maintenance policing are deliberately broad and highly discretionary (Roberts 1998), they can result in nearly ubiquitous opportunities for large-scale arrests when applied to marginalized spaces and people (Beckett et al 2005, 2006), including in Miami (Petersen et al 2018). Enforcing drug laws in neighborhoods of color, thus, becomes a means to increase arrest rates (Beckett et al 2005, 2006).…”

Section: Charging Trajectories and Cumulative Disadvantagementioning

confidence: 99%

Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Police and Prosecutorial Drug Charging: Analyzing Organizational Overlap in Charging Patterns at Arrest, Filing, and Conviction

Johnson

Omori

Petersen

2022

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

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Objective: Explore racial-ethnic disparities in drug charging trajectories from arrest to conviction. Methods: We analyze racial-ethnic disparities in charging severity across arrest, filing, and conviction for felony drug offense cases in Miami-Dade County between 2010-2015 (N=25,559) using a “distance traveled” approach by estimating the severity of charges based on the probability of incarceration at conviction. We use these estimates to predict the severity of charges at arrest and filing, and examine differences in the severity of charges between stages. Results: Compared to White non-Latinx people, police charge Black Latinx people with drug crimes that are 1.8 times more severe and Black non-Latinx people with drug crimes that are 1.6 times more severe at arrest. These inequalities are maintained throughout the charging trajectory. Greater charge reductions occur between arrest and filing than between filing and conviction, highlighting the importance of police in charging trajectories. We find small increases in charging trajectory, where racial-ethnic disparities persist at conviction. Conclusions: Examining charging at arrest is critical to understanding racial-ethnic disparities in charging trajectories, where unequal arrest charges become institutionalized throughout the charging process. Organizational dynamics between police and prosecutors may lead to drug charging practices that systematically disadvantage Black people in Miami-Dade County.

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“…The size and scope of Miami‐Dade's lower courts have increased over recent decades, in part due to the rise of broken windows proactive policing for lower‐level offenses such as marijuana possession, loitering, and panhandling. In the 1990s, local laws were passed to “clean‐up” urban disorder in the area by criminalizing homelessness and related disorder offenses (Feldman ), and since then local police departments have also directed their attention to lower‐level drug crimes (Petersen, Omori, and Lautenschlager ). Journalistic accounts indicate that black residents in the county are targeted for lower‐level offenses, such as misdemeanor marijuana possession, resulting in disproportionately high stop‐and‐frisk rates among the black population (Brennan and Weston ).…”

Section: Research Design and Study Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Journalistic accounts indicate that black residents in the county are targeted for lower‐level offenses, such as misdemeanor marijuana possession, resulting in disproportionately high stop‐and‐frisk rates among the black population (Brennan and Weston ). Therefore, similar to broken windows policing in New York City and other jurisdictions, increasing police attention to lower‐level disorder crimes in Miami has expanded the size of its lower‐level courts, producing a system of “mass misdemeanors” (Petersen, Omori, and Lautenschlager ).…”

Section: Research Design and Study Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Process the Only Punishment?: Racial–Ethnic Disparities in Lower‐Level Courts

Petersen

Omori

2020

Law & Policy

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Although misdemeanors make up the bulk of criminal cases in the United States, the majority of research on court decision-making examines felony sentencing. In contrast to felony courts, lower-level courts are characterized by higher case volumes and increased reliance on informal sanctions, which may contribute to greater racial-ethnic disparities. To assess this possibility, we examine pretrial detention and case processing outcomes for misdemeanants in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Utilizing temporal (detention time) and monetary (bond amount) measures of pretrial detention, we assess whether and to what extent there are racial-ethnic disparities in formal and informal sanctions facing misdemeanants. Results indicate that black defendants, especially black Latinx defendants, face greater informal sanctions (longer detention and higher bond amounts), are more likely to be convicted, and experience more severe formal sanctions than do white non-Latinx defendants. These findings complicate Feeley's (1979) argument about lower-level cases, revealing that black defendants are punished by both the court process and formal sanctions. In this way, "the process is the punishment" for lower-level white and nonwhite defendants, while the punishment is also the punishment for black defendants.Racial and ethnic inequalities in US incarceration rates have dramatically risen over the past several decades, and as a result, black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men (Sentencing Project 2017). Although much attention has been devoted to the causes and consequences of racialized mass incarceration in the US, relatively less attention has been given to the larger, and perhaps less visible, forms of criminal justice social control in lower-level courts (Murakawa and Beckett 2010;Kohler-Hausmann 2018). Due to the expansion of broken windows policing and other lower-level law enforcement strategies, the misdemeanor arrest rate has increased threefold in recent decades (Murakawa and Beckett 2010; Lum and Vovak 2018). 1 While a large proportion of misdemeanants are people of color (Kohler-Hausmann 2018), and racial-ethnic disparities in lower-level proactive policing strategies have been well documented (Fagan et al. 2016), few studies have examined racial-ethnic inequalities in lower-level court processing.This gap in the literature has important implications for our understandings of racialethnic disparities in case processing more broadly. Misdemeanors and other lower-level cases differ from felonies in several ways, being characterized by higher caseloads, We would like to thank the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and its Greater Miami Chapter. We would also like to thank our research assistants on the project:

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(Dis)order in the Court: Examining Neighborhood Disorder Prosecutions in Miami-Dade County

Cited by 11 publications

References 57 publications

Examining the Gap Between Prosecutor Attitudes and Decisions: Case Prioritization Through Case Elimination Mechanisms in Driving With a Suspended License Cases

Examining the Gap Between Prosecutor Attitudes and Decisions: Case Prioritization Through Case Elimination Mechanisms in Driving With a Suspended License Cases

Racial-Ethnic Disparities in Police and Prosecutorial Drug Charging: Analyzing Organizational Overlap in Charging Patterns at Arrest, Filing, and Conviction

Is the Process the Only Punishment?: Racial–Ethnic Disparities in Lower‐Level Courts

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