New Dashboard Metric Shows How North Carolina Criminal Charges Get Disposed

We recently added 2022 and 2023 Automated Criminal Infractions System (ACIS) court records data to our Measuring Justice Dashboard. We also just released a new Dashboard metric showing how North Carolina criminal charges get disposed. At the Lab, we support evidence-based approaches to criminal justice that promote public safety, a fair and effective system, and economic opportunity for all people. There is a lot in the new Dashboard metric that can be used to advance these goals. To help unpack the Dashboard’s new Charge Disposition metric, let’s look at the big picture. From 2014−2023, nearly 15 million criminal charges were disposed in North Carolina. As shown in the figure below, less than one in five (18.7%, 2.8 million charges) resulted in a finding of guilt. Four of every five disposed charges (81.3%, over 12 million charges) were resolved with no finding of guilt. For charges that resulted in a finding of guilt, those determinations overwhelmingly came from guilty pleas; less than 3% of the determinations that resulted in a finding of guilt came from a trial. What about the more than 12 million charges that didn’t end in a determination of guilt—how were they resolved? As the figure below shows, the vast majority were dismissed. Resolution by civil liability (civil infraction) was the next largest disposition type for charges that didn’t result in a finding of guilt. How criminal charges get resolved, all disposed charges (14,904,307), statewide, 2014-2023 The Dashboard allows you to dig deeper. For example, you can explore these [...]