Professor John Pfaff’s research was cited in a Daily News article that looks at the role of local district attorneys in addressing the issue of mass incarceration.
Less well known is local prosecutors’ outsized role in this system. Only one in 10 criminal cases are prosecuted at the federal level. Federal prisons and jails hold approximately 221,000 people, a figure dwarfed by the more than 1.9 million people held in state prisons and jails. And the rise of mass incarceration has been fueled primarily by local prosecutors, who have immense discretion to pursue criminal charges. Fordham University law professor John Pfaff’s research proves it: From 1994 to 2008, the crime rate and total number of arrests fell, yet prison admissions grew by 35%. Why? Pfaff found that something else grew by 35%: felony charges filed by prosecutors. Pfaff also found that half of this increase occurred in cases where misdemeanors were charged as felonies.