Why does case attrition occur

This failure of arrests to come to trial is called case attrition, and most attrition occurs between arrest and filing. This study examines the differences in felony case attrition among 25 large police agencies in Los Angeles County; determines how much of the variance can be explained by differences in police practices, after crime and community characteristics are controlled for; and identifies those policies and practices that were related to higher conviction rates.

The results were mixed and largely negative. The authors found that prevailing assumptions about attrition rates should be reexamined, and that statistics reflecting case-attrition patterns are not a valid basis for comparative evaluation of police departments.

The report was a product of the RAND Corporation from to that represented the principal publication documenting and transmitting RAND's major research findings and final research. Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete.

Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. Case Attrition Checkpoint Case attrition is the failure of arrests to come to trial. Half or more of all felony arrests end with no conviction.

Some actions, for example, are not legally de? There are three models of criminal justice system the funnel. The funnel model demonstrates how many crimes that are processed through the system decreases at each step due to case attrition. The wedding cake model demonstrates how cases are arranged into layers depending on their significance, with less serious cases starting the bottom layer and more serious cases forming the smaller layers on top. The net has characteristics that allow some offenders to exit the net at certain points, while others struggle unsuccessfully to get free but merely further entangle themselves.

Case attrition has an extremely huge effect on the criminal justice process. There are some cases where crimes occurred and go unreported. For example, in a lot of domestic abuses cases go unreported because of fearing retaliation or fearing loss of family income if the abuser is incarcerated.

There are cases where crime and it does not become a criminal case. The police have to make determination on whether or not a crime has been committed, and if so, who is responsible for the crime.