The Metropolitan Crime Commission (MCC)  is a non-profit, privately funded, citizen’s watchdog organization dedicated to exposing and eliminating public corruption and to reducing the incidence of crime and improving the administration of justice in New Orleans.

The Metropolitan Crime Commission (MCC) reported in August of 2005 on the performance of the New Orleans criminal justice system. It found a court system that sends a low (and dropping) percentage of defendants to prison for violent and serious crimes; and, a system that is increasingly overwhelmed with defendants prosecuted for misdemeanor offenses. In short, our criminal justice system fails to put violent and habitual offenders behind bars. An analysis of a representative sample of cases adjudicated at Criminal District Court (CDC) from October 2003 through September 2004 finds that:

• Only 5% of all convictions in CDC were for violent offenses.
• 60% of all convictions in CDC were for misdemeanor offenses, 47% for misdemeanor drug possession or possession of drug paraphernalia, essentially making CDC a misdemeanor court.
• Two out of three (67%) convictions were for simple drug possession.
• Only 7% of those arrested by the NOPD in 2003-2004 were eventually sentenced to prison, a 41% decrease in the incarceration rate since 1999-2000.
• Judges of Orleans CDC are less likely than judges in other jurisdictions to incarcerate individuals convicted of felony offenses, particularly drug distribution.
  

Central to turning this faltering system around is harnessing the resources of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) and the District Attorney’s (DA’s) Office early on in the preparation of criminal cases by changing the dynamics of the current case screening process. The case screening process includes the NOPD preparing arrest reports and the DA’s Office deciding what charges, if any, to bring against a defendant.

The MCC finds that the case screening system in New Orleans continues to present structural barriers that inhibit a more effective and integrated working relationship between the NOPD and the Assistant District Attorneys (ADA’s) in the Screening Division of the DA’s Office. Specifically, the case screening system prevents arresting officers who establish probable cause for arrests from interacting with screening ADA’s who must decide whether or not to prosecute defendants. The result is the greatly reduced performance of our criminal justice system.

Data presented in this MCC report document the outcomes of criminal cases and demonstrate the failure of our justice system agencies, including the courts, to remove violent and repeat offenders from the streets of New Orleans.