Conviction rate

The conviction rate, expressed as a percentage, is the proportion of criminal trials completed that deliver a verdict of guilt, a conviction, for an offense.

Conviction rates reflect many aspects of the legal processes and systems at work within the jurisdiction; high rates are a source of both jurisdictional pride and broad controversy. Rates are often high, especially when presented in their most general form (i.e., without qualification regarding changes made to original charges, pleas that are negotiated, etc.). Rates across jurisdictions within some countries can vary by tens of percentage points (e.g., across states within the U.S.). In other cases, they are uniformly high, e.g., in China, Japan, and Russia.

While conviction rates can be illustrative of the success of prosecutorial efforts, they also may depict the prevalence of Type I error (criminal conviction where the defendant is, in fact, not guilty). Judge James A. Shapiro and Northwestern University's Prof. Karl T. Muth suggest: "When jurors misapprehend how high the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is, they are in danger of convicting the innocent, the gravest kind of mistake that is called 'Type I error.' When they let a guilty person go free, they commit a less serious kind of mistake called 'Type II error.' In fact, the theory behind proof beyond a reasonable doubt (letting several guilty people go free in order to save one innocent person) actually contemplates Type II error." This concept is not new; a ratio of 10 instances of Type II error (incorrect not guilty verdicts) for each instance of Type I error (erroneous convictions) is sometimes referred to as Blackstone's Ratio.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.