Progressive Prosecutors Were Not Responsible for Increases in Violent or Property Crime Before, During, or After the COVID-19 Pandemic

The recent movement to elect reform-minded prosecutors flourished on the promise of a safer, more equitable, and transparent criminal legal system. Many were elected through strong support from the communities that have most suffered from violence and overincarceration. Some of the promised reforms have included undoing wrongful convictions, holding law enforcement accountable, expanding restorative justice strategies, focusing resources on violent crime, treating substance abuse and mental health disorders as public health issues, and expanding diversion programs.

The uptick in violent crime that began during the COVID-19 pandemic hit jurisdictions across the country and generated fierce political debate over causes and solutions. Critics of prosecutorial reform quickly leapt to blame progressive prosecutors, despite research finding no link between progressive prosecutors and rises in homicide. In fact, homicides increased less in cities with progressive prosecutors during this period. Nevertheless, opponents of prosecutorial reform have been leveraging legitimate public concerns over safety to justify drastic—even unconstitutional—steps to undermine, remove, or otherwise restrict prosecutors deemed progressive. Recall efforts have been launched in several jurisdictions and led to the removal of District Attorney Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. Led by conservative politicians, some states have adopted legislation creating different mechanisms to remove or preempt local prosecutors who are assessed as not punitive enough. These actions are shortsighted, undermine the will of local voters, and can have negative public safety consequences.

Nationally, crime is now declining, with historic drops in homicide and gun violence in most cities throughout 2023. Multiple in-depth analyses of state and local data are finding even steeper declines in homicide, violent crime, and property crime in the first half of 2024. Although this progress is welcome, even one life lost is unacceptable. Researchers, policymakers, and community leaders are understandably seeking meaningful explanations for the crime patterns of the past 3 1/2 years, including how prosecutors and their policies affect crime.

A new comprehensive study by the University of Toronto  found that not only are progressive prosecutors not responsible for increases in homicide or violent crimes before, during, or after the pandemic, but no evidence supports the claim that prosecutors of any type are responsible for crime patterns. In addition, researchers found no connection between prosecutorial decisions not to prosecute certain offenses and fluctuations in crime. Instead, understanding and addressing crime patterns requires a thorough examination of local social, economic, and environmental factors.

Summary of new research

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy evaluated crime data across hundreds of cities and counties in the United States between 2014 and 2023 to identify any correlation between progressive prosecution and homicide, rape, robbery, assault, and property crime. Using a typology deployed by a critic of progressive prosecutors that defined prosecutors as either “progressive,” “middle,” or “traditional,” the researchers analyzed multiple datasets across jurisdictions with a variety of prosecutor types. They then conducted an in-depth analysis of crime trends and prosecutorial practices in four large cities—San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles; and New York City—to assess whether relationships existed between rates of recorded crime and the rates at which prosecutors declined to prosecute defendants, the policy progressive prosecutors are most commonly accused of abusing.

Changes in violent crime over the past decade

The study reviewed data from 2014 to 2023 reported to the Major City Chiefs Association by 62 cities with populations greater than 250,000. These data were used to examine changes in homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery across cities with progressive, middle, or traditional prosecutors. The researchers also expanded their analysis to include “injury deaths” from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more than 1,000 counties across the United States. The analysis found that:

• Homicide rates increased between 2014 and 2021, with significant variations within that time frame across cities with all three types of prosecutors. Homicides began declining in cities with all prosecutor types beginning in 2022.
• Between 2014 and 2023, rates of aggravated assault rose in all types of cities but increased more in cities served by traditional and middle prosecutors than those with progressive prosecutors.
• Between 2014 and 2023, rates of robbery declined across cities with all types of prosecutors, decreasing at a faster rate in cities with progressive prosecutors.
• Between 2014 and 2023, rates of rape fluctuated wildly but decreased more overall in cities with progressive prosecutors.

Changes in shoplifting over the past 5 years

Much has been made about shoplifting trends over the past few years, with unfounded claims that shoplifting has been surging nationwide. The reality is that the average rate of shoplifting remains lower than before the pandemic, although some cities have experienced significant increases. The University of Toronto study examined shoplifting rates for a set of 29 cities between 2018 and July 2023 across cities with progressive, middle, or traditional prosecutors. It also analyzed shoplifting data between January 2019 and March 2022 from Virginia and Texas—two states with sufficient cohorts of both progressive and traditional prosecutors to draw comparisons between specific jurisdictions. The study found no correlation between progressive prosecutor cities and shoplifting trends. Specifically:

• Although shoplifting rates varied widely across cities, cities with traditional prosecutors on average had nearly twice the rate of shoplifting as cities with middle or progressive prosecutors, although shoplifting rates increased slightly more on average in cities with progressive prosecutors between 2018 and 2023.
• While shoplifting rates in Texas increased more in cities without progressive prosecutors, in Virginia, shoplifting rates increased more in cities with progressive prosecutors. However, this increase only began in March 2022, more than three years after the first progressive prosecutor was elected in Virginia.

A deep dive: San Francisco, Portland, New York City, and Los Angeles

Although a growing number of prosecutors have pledged to reform the criminal legal system, even describing themselves as “progressive,” no comprehensive analysis has been conducted to identify the kind of policy changes they have implemented or the impact they may have had.

One policy commonly associated with prosecutorial reform is a commitment not to prosecute certain low-level offenses on the basis that they consume scarce prosecutorial resources, perpetuate racial disparities, and can actually worsen public safety. Prosecutors must determine which cases merit prosecution on a daily basis, informed by several considerations: the interests of the victim; sufficiency of the evidence; how to deploy scarce resources; the availability and efficacy of alternative strategies, such as community-based treatment or restorative justice programs; and the impact of criminal prosecution and conviction on all involved. Declination rates vary widely by prosecutorial office, although all offices decline to prosecute some portion of cases. But critics of prosecutorial reform have argued that declination policies signal to would-be offenders that crime will go unpunished and thereby perpetuate more crime.

The University of Toronto study accounts for these gaps by taking an in-depth look at San Francisco, Portland, New York City, and Los Angeles—all cities with progressive prosecutors elected within the past eight years—to identify the rates at which progressive prosecutors declined to prosecute cases and whether those decisions were correlated with changes in crime. The researchers found that in two of these cities, progressive prosecutors actually increased the rate at which they charged crime relative to their predecessors, and as a whole, declination rates did not correlate with crime increases. In fact, crime decreased in several jurisdictions where declination rates increased.

San Francisco

Between 2020 and 2022, San Francisco’s district attorney was Chesa Boudin, a self-described progressive. He was ultimately recalled in 2022 after critics argued that he failed to prosecute people sufficiently and worsened safety. However, the University of Toronto’s analysis disproves these claims. During Boudin’s tenure, crime trends varied: Motor vehicle theft and larceny-theft increased, although their rise began before Boudin took office; robbery and assault rates remained stable; and burglary decreased. Homicide increased in 2020—a nationwide pattern—and then held steady. Meanwhile, the rate at which Boudin’s office filed charges for serious offenses increased by 16 percent, from 50 percent to 66 percent overall:

• Rates of charging for robbery rose from 58 percent to 71 percent.
• Rates of charging for assault increased from 39 percent to 58 percent.
• Rates of charging for commercial burglary rose from 64 percent to 88 percent.
• Rates of charging for residential burglary increased from 57 percent to 87 percent.
• Rates of charging for motor vehicle theft rose from 33 percent to 54 percent.

Charges filed for misdemeanors of vandalism and trespass also increased.

Portland

In 2020, Portland elected Mike Schmidt, a self-described progressive prosecutor, and critics have similarly accused him of failing to hold people accountable and therefore causing crime to increase. Again, a close analysis of both Portland’s crime trends and Schmidt’s policies discredit these claims. The prosecution rates for both felony and misdemeanor crimes rose during Schmidt’s tenure, and much of the violent crime increase in Portland in recent years began before Schmidt’s election, while other crime patterns varied considerably. For example, homicide began rising steeply two years before Schmidt was elected, then continued a more gradual rise into 2022—mirroring trends occurring nationally—and began declining the last year of Schmidt’s tenure. Assault also began increasing prior to Schmidt’s tenure, dropped during his first year, and rose in 2021 before declining in 2022 and 2023—a common trend across the country. Conversely, after Schmidt was elected, the rate of prosecution increased:

• The rate of rejection for felony referrals dropped from 43 percent in June 2020—two months before Schmidt took office—to 15 percent at the end of 2023.
• The declination rate for misdemeanors decreased from 72 percent in August 2020 to 25 percent in December 2023.

New York City

There are five distinct prosecutorial jurisdictions in New York City, each representing one of the city’s boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island. Each borough is represented by a prosecutor with a different prosecutorial philosophy, but they all receive cases referred to them by the same police department. The University of Toronto researchers analyzed both felony and misdemeanor declination rates (using state data on the dispositions of adult arrests) for four of the five boroughs alongside crime rates for the city between 2018 and 2022 and found substantial variation in the declination rates for each office, while crime trends followed similar trajectories across boroughs. Notably, the prosecutor who received the most criticism for being “progressive” was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who first took office in 2022 in the borough with the lowest felony and misdemeanor declination in the city. In 2019 and 2020, every borough in which prosecutors decreased their rates of filing charges also saw decreases in crime. Conversely, in 2021 and 2022, while crime increased in all boroughs, all prosecutors simultaneously increased the rate at which they were bringing charges.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles is the largest prosecutorial jurisdiction in the country and is served by multiple, distinct police and sheriff departments. In 2020, it elected a self-described progressive prosecutor, George Gascon, who has been criticized for his policies and has even faced recall efforts. During 2020 and 2021—Gascon’s first two years in office—overall violent crime increased, as it did in many cities across the nation, but across cities within Los Angeles County, there was no pattern to the violent or property crime trends. The University of Toronto researchers also analyzed declination rates across the jurisdictions within Los Angeles County before and after Gascon was elected and found that declination rates for misdemeanors nearly tripled in Gascon’s first three years in office, while declination rates for felonies increased modestly. They also found that after Gascon’s election, prosecutors charged a greater portion of cases referred by police involving a charge of homicide, rape, or sexual assault. And yet, crime patterns in most of the jurisdictions within Los Angeles County did not correlate with changes in prosecution rates. The researchers concluded that the increased declinations did not result in an increase in crime recorded by the police departments within Los Angeles County. In the case of misdemeanor declinations, the researchers found that where declinations were higher, there were actually lower numbers of lower-level offenses, such as simple assault, fraud, vandalism, stolen property, and others.

Key takeaways

The University of Toronto study reinforces the fact that blaming prosecutorial reform for crime trends is misplaced, misapprehends the role of the prosecutor within the criminal legal system, and may actually worsen safety in many communities. Prosecutors can play a role in improving public safety through a number of strategies: focusing their resources on serious crime; holding people accountable in ways that interrupt cycles of offending while supporting crime survivors; collaborating with community-based services to address underlying issues driving criminal behavior; dismissing and declining to prosecute cases that do not serve the interests of justice, safety, or the victim; and ensuring their approach reflects the values, needs, and priorities of their communities.

Given their findings that progressive prosecutors are not responsible for increases in crime, the University of Toronto researchers highlight two possible paths for future research to explain changing crime patterns: 1) the impact of changing dynamics between prosecutors and other criminal justice system actors, such as policing and the courts, as well as other areas of prosecutorial discretion such as recommendations for pretrial release and sentencing, and 2) more broadly, what they term the “social ecology of crime and violence.” The latter recommendation would focus on how social, environmental, economic, and geographical factors affect crime at hyperlocal levels and is consistent with robust research demonstrating that these factors all play a larger role in fostering or diminishing crime than the functions of independent criminal justice agencies.

Conclusion

Everyone has the right to live their daily lives without the fear of crime or violence, and communities are rightfully calling for effective solutions that improve safety. But rather than pursue misguided efforts to remove progressive prosecutors from office, communities would benefit far more from investments into strategies that prevent crime altogether and build the infrastructure that fosters well-being. This includes improving the built environment of neglected neighborhoods, creating opportunities and solid education for young people, expanding public safety and crisis responder workforces to include a wide range of civilian experts, increasing access to health care and stable housing, and fostering economic opportunities in disinvested communities. Policymakers and community leaders must continue the complex work of addressing crime without defaulting to politically expedient but ineffective strategies.