Courtroom to Career: How Prosecutors’ Non-Prosecution Policies Affect Employment

This project investigates whether prosecutorial declination policies—formal decisions not to prosecute specific low-level offenses—improve employment outcomes for individuals diverted from the criminal justice system. Despite evidence that criminal records devastate employment prospects, particularly for Black Americans who face disproportionate arrest rates, no causal evidence exists on whether prosecutorial reforms that prevent criminal record creation enhance economic mobility. Using newly available Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS) data linked to Census employment records, Okafor will exploit staggered implementation of declination policies across 30-50 prosecutor offices from 2018-2023 to identify causal effects on earnings and employment. The difference-in-differences design compares individuals arrested for newly declined offenses in treatment jurisdictions to similar individuals in matched control jurisdictions. The project will produce the first national evidence on how prosecutorial charging decisions affect labor market trajectories. Even modest employment gains would generate substantial benefits given that 10 million arrests occur annually. Results will directly inform the 2,300 elected prosecutors nationwide about a scalable intervention for reducing structural barriers to economic mobility that disproportionately affect minority communities.