"The Problem with Prosecuting Police"- The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project.

The latest data released by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which indicates that the conviction rate for members of the general public who were tried on criminal charges ranged around 68% from 2002 through 2006. Furthermore, the US BJS reports indicated that the incarceration rate remained fairly stable at an average of 70% and the average length of post-conviction incarceration for the general public was 49 months.

For a comparison we can use data from our National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) which tracked over 8,300 credible reports involving allegations of police misconduct in the US from April of 2009 through December 2010 which involved nearly 11,000 law enforcement officers within those 21 months. Of those reported allegations, only 3,238 resulted in criminal charges against law enforcement officers. Of those 3,238 criminal cases against law enforcement officers in the US, only 1,063 officers were ultimately convicted of those charges or reduced charges associated with the original allegations. Of the law enforcement officers who were ultimately convicted, 36% were ultimately sentenced to spend any time incarcerated and the average length of incarceration for those sentenced to prison or jail was approximately 34.6 months.

This would appear to indicate that there are disparities on a national scale between how law enforcement officers are treated in the criminal justice system since conviction and incarceration rates for law enforcement officers are nearly half that of the conviction and incarceration rates for the general public and, even when convicted, law enforcement officers spend 29% less time behind bars on average than the rest of the public.

The disparity becomes even more apparent when we focus only on excessive force cases. Of the 2,716 law enforcement officers involved in alleged incidents where use of force was questioned, only 197 were ultimately charged with a criminal offense and, of that 197, only 77 were convicted. Of even more relevance, for the 426 law enforcement officers who were accused of using excessive force in incidents where a fatality occurred, only 28 faced charges and half of those who were prosecuted ended up being convicted.

It is interesting that, even though the prosecution rates for non-fatal and fatal excessive force incidents are at an identical 7%, the conviction rate for fatal excessive force cases is 11% higher, at 50%, than the non-fatal excessive force conviction rate of 39%. As a comparison point, off-duty assault allegations result in criminal charges 55% of the time and end in a conviction 24% of the time. Off-duty murder allegations result in a prosecution rate of 71% and conviction rate of 45% which appears to indicate that on-duty violence is tolerated more than off-duty violence.

Oddly, this would give the appearance that it may be easier, not harder, to convict police officers accused of fatal use of excessive force, in fact the conviction rate for fatal excessive force cases was higher than any other type of case according to the data we’ve gathered (followed by murder at 45% and sexual offences at 41%). This would also appear to indicate that successfully prosecuting excessive force cases may not be as difficult as suggested since the conviction rates for these cases are actually higher than the overall average law enforcement conviction rate of 37%.

However, these numbers could also indicate that prosecutors are far more particular about what excessive force cases they pursue since the charge rates for both non-fatal and fatal excessive force cases are so much lower than any other type of case. In fact, there does appear to be an inverse relationship between prosecution and conviction rates when it comes to law enforcement officers (when excluding drug-related cases).


Link: http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=3928