2018 Sentencing Commission Statistical Report Available

Spring is just around the corner. Daffodils. Daylight saving time. Filling out your bracket. And reading the annual Structured Sentencing Statistical Report for Felonies and Misdemeanors from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. Today’s post collects some of the highlights of the report. This year’s report, available here, covers sentencing episodes from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. That's 28,985 felonies and 94,150 misdemeanors. The number of felony sentences was up slightly from last year, while misdemeanors continued their decade-long decline. (There were 164,000 misdemeanor sentences in 2007!) Remember, always, that the report is based on sentencing episodes, defined as the most serious conviction for a defendant on a given day of court. Most common grid cell. As usual, Class H/Level II was the most frequently used cell on the felony sentencing grid. That grid cell alone accounted for 12.4 percent of all felony sentences. Convictions by district. Wake County had—by far—the greatest number of felony convictions (2,306). Mecklenburg had the second most (1,619), followed closely by Guilford (1,540). The fewest felony convictions (134) came from District 30A (Macon, Clay, Cherokee, Graham, and Swain). The second fewest (138) came from District 6B (Hertford, Northampton, and Bertie). Those numbers are interesting, but a new feature in this year’s report (Appendix C, Table 1 on page 60) shows what may be an even more helpful metric: the number of convictions per 1000 adults in each district. By that measure, District 29A (McDowell, Rutherford) has the highest per capita conviction rate, while Mecklenburg, [...]