Victims, Police, and Criminal Court Decisions - A Research Note on Witness Participation and Case Processing

• NCJ Number: 88917
• Journal: Victimology Volume: 6 Issue: 1-4 Dated: (1981) Pages: 345-354
• Author(s): F Dill
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 10 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

An analysis of information about case processing in the lower criminal court of Brooklyn, New York, shows that victims of crime are less successful in securing favorable case outcomes than police officer complaints.

Abstract

Cases were chosen for study by drawing a 3.33 percent systematic sample from new cases numbered and docketed for arraignment during October and November 1975. All 251 cases in the original sample had reached arraignment, but 29 had not been adjudicated when files were pulled for research in April 1976. The analysis treated the outcome of adjudication as a dichotomous variable: retention or nonretention of defendants for sanctioning. Findings show that individual victims account for nearly two-thirds of the cases handled by the court. Cases in which police officers appear as complaining witnesses amount to 30.7 percent of all cases arraigned. The largest proportion of these cases feature defendants accused of endangering or defying public legal order. Police officers make additional demands on the court to resolve charges against persons accused of victimless crime and regulatory offenses. More than two-thirds of the cases initiated by police were retrained for sanctioning, while slightly over half of the cases initiated by victims were retained, a difference of almost 16 percent. Variation in retention rates is even greater in cases involving felony charges only. Factors important in explaining these results are (1) victims of crime lack support from an established organization; (2) the victim has no legal right to insist that charges be brought or dropped against the defendant; and (3) dismissal of charges resulting from the failure of a victim complainant to appear in court gives victims a negative power over case outcome that is nowhere explicitly contemplated in criminal law. The findings suggest that victim/witness assistance must address obstacles to participation which are deeply rooted in traditional organization of criminal courts. Tabular data and 27 references are provided.