Assessing the Impact of Plea Bargaining on Subsequent Violence for Firearm Offenders, Maryland, 2015-2019 (ICPSR 39244)

Version Date: Jan 16, 2025

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Principal Investigator(s):
Brian D. Johnson, University of Maryland; Kiminori Nakamura, University of Maryland

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39244.v1

Version V1

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Summary

The purpose of this study was to assess how patterns of prosecution and plea bargaining in firearms cases shape subsequent case and defendant outcomes. Drawing on recent work (Johnson and Larroulet, 2019), the researchers developed measures of plea bargaining discounts and examined their effects on sentencing and recidivism for firearms-involved offenders. To do so, the investigators [1] analyzed unique data collected by the Client Legal Utility Engine (CLUE), a web-scraped database of court records for all criminal cases in the State of Maryland for a cohort of defendants charged with firearms-involved crimes in district and circuit courts between 2015 and 2019; [2] generated estimates of the average distance traveled in charge bargaining, or the magnitude of average sentencing discounts in gun cases in Maryland by comparing expected sentences based on the original filed charges to the final charges at conviction; and [3] explored the association between plea discounts and recidivism, measured by the defendant coming back into the criminal court system on new criminal charges. The resulting dataset includes information on criminal case processing outcomes for firearms-related cases processed in Maryland district and circuit courts for the time period 2015-2019.

Citation

Johnson, Brian D., and Nakamura, Kiminori. Assessing the Impact of Plea Bargaining on Subsequent Violence for Firearm Offenders, Maryland, 2015-2019. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-01-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39244.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (2020-75-CX-0004)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

county

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2015 -- 2019
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Study Purpose

The purpose of the study was to investigate the association between plea bargaining, sentencing, and recidivism outcomes in state-wide sample of firearms-involved offenders.

Study Design

To assess the effects of plea bargaining on sentencing and recidivism, the project developed a unique dataset by obtaining judicial case processing information from criminal court records for each of Maryland's 24 judicial districts. The data came from the Maryland Judiciary Case Search, a publicly accessible online repository of case records for the Maryland Judiciary. The Case Search database provides updated, detailed information for all Maryland District and Circuit Court cases starting in the early 1990s, including defendant information (name, date of birth, sex, race), charge information (charge, charge code, charge date, disposition, disposition date), pre-trial incarceration and bail information (commitment date, bail amount if not denied), and sentencing information (months of incarceration), among other details.

To access the Case Search data for both District and Circuit Courts, the researchers used the Client Legal Utility Engine (CLUE), a web-scraped database of Case Search records developed by the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Services (MVLS). The CLUE system repeatedly scrapes court cases, parsing the data, and saving individual data points to a statewide database.

The researchers also calculated proxies for criminal history and reoffending by employing matching algorithms to identify repeat defendants who appear more than once in the database. They did this by matching current defendants in the data to their past and future cases based on first name, last name, date of birth, gender, and race. Specifically, for past criminal involvement, they identified the number of prior criminal cases and criminal convictions for each defendant in our sample. The research team utilized a similar procedure for measuring recidivism. Each time a defendant appeared in the data, the researchers linked them to all subsequent criminal cases in which they reappeared on new criminal charges following the disposition of their current case, which was used as a proxy for reoffending.

Sample

Web-scraped court records for all criminal cases involving the possession or use of firearms in Maryland, 2015-2019.

Universe

Firearms-related criminal cases processed in Maryland courts

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Source

Client Legal Utility Engine (CLUE)

Maryland Judiciary Case Search (MJCS)

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

2025-01-16

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Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.