Giving Compass' Take:

• Matt Daniels unpacks how Kim Foxx transformed prosecution in Cook County, Illinois by rejecting cases the pervious State's Attorney would have pursued. 

• This data shows that elected officials like Foxx can have a significant impact on criminal justice and mass incarceration. How are elected criminal justice officials in your community influencing prosecution? 

• Learn how judges and decision-makers in New York reduced the use of bail. 

Those who want to reform the criminal justice system are placing their bets on a new wave of prosecutors who have been voted in around the country. Elect a district attorney who will pursue fewer cases, the reasoning goes, and fewer people will be drawn into jails and prisons.

In 2016, Kim Foxx unseated an incumbent in Cook County, Illinois, vowing to transform the nation’s second-largest local prosecutor’s office and to bring more accountability to shootings by police while also reducing unnecessary prosecutions for low-level, non-violent crimes.

One year into her term, Foxx did something no other state’s attorney had ever done: she released six years of data outlining what happened in every felony brought to her office, offering an unprecedented view into the decision-making of prosecutors and its impact.

Our analysis of this data provides the first detailed look at the more than 35,000 cases that flow through Foxx’s office every year. We found that since she took office she turned away more than 5,000 cases that would have been pursued by previous State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, mostly by declining to prosecute low-level shoplifting and drug offenses and by diverting more cases to alternative treatment programs. Foxx has not finished her term, so these trends could yet change.

Further analysis shows that Foxx’s office is exercising discretion in the way it handles drug cases too, which skip the felony review process and go directly to courts. We estimate that Cook County prosecutors have dismissed an additional 2,300 drug cases that, under Alvarez, would have otherwise gone to trial—or ended in a plea. The defendants in some of these cases instead have been diverted to treatment and counseling that led to their charges being dropped.

Read the full article about Kim Foxx by Matt Daniels at The Marshall Project.