Definitions

Criminal Legal Terms

Arrest: Law enforcement takes an individual into legal custody when they find there is “probable cause” to believe that an individual has committed a felony or a misdemeanor has been committed in their presence.

Bail or bond: The amount of money set by the court for the release of a person accused of a crime. It is designed to assure the person's presence for trial and may contain additional non-monetary conditions of release.

Beyond a reasonable doubt: the legal burden of proof required to convict a defendant in a criminal case at trial. The prosecution bears the burden of proving that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt – in other words, that there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented.

Bond Hearing: If in custody a bond hearing is held to provide argument, evidence, or testimony for the Court to use in determining an appropriate amount of bail to be set for a defendant.

Case: A case is a collection of all charges against a defendant arising out of a single incident. In this dashboard, cases are classified by their most serious charge (the crime that a defendant is accused of committing). 

Crime: An act prohibited by statute.

Conviction: The outcome of criminal case when a defendant is determined to be guilty of a crime.

Defendant: The person against whom a criminal case is pending.

Filing a case: Prosecutors review arrest reports/referrals for each felony case. If the prosecutor determines the evidence supports a good faith belief in conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, the case is filed and continues until resolution.

In custody: When an individual is being detained by law enforcement, the court, or another legal entity and is not free to leave.

Plea agreement: an agreement between the prosecution and the defendant defining the specific conditions and crimes to which a defendant chooses to plead guilty.

Pretrial detention: Defendants who are detained pretrial are incarcerated in jail prior to resolution of the case.

Probable cause: Evidentiary reason for arrest or to obtain a warrant. A reasonable basis for believing that a crime has been committed.

Recidivism:  For the purposes of our dashboard, defendants who recidivate are those who have a new criminal case (misdemeanor or felony) filed after case resolution. This might include a new law violation or a violation of a defendant’s term of probation.

Referred: A case is referred when it is submitted to the State Attorney’s Office for review. This includes investigations, arrests, warrants, notices to appear, citations, and other requests for prosecution.

Victim: A victim is a person who has suffered direct or threatened physical psychological, or financial harm as a result of the commission or attempted commission of a crime.

Charge Levels

Felony: Felonies are the most serious criminal violations of Maryland state laws, and include crimes such murder, rape, robbery, and manufacture and delivery of illegal drugs. Sentences following conviction for a felony may include fines, probation, community corrections, and prison.

Misdemeanor: Misdemeanors are less serious criminal violations of Maryland state laws, punishable by a sentence of up to 364 days in county jail. A person convicted of a misdemeanor cannot be sentenced to state prison, unless the misdemeanor sentence is served simultaneously (concurrently) with a felony sentence. Misdemeanors cover a wide range of offenses, including domestic violence, simple assault, obstructing a police officer.

In addition to the type of offense, select analyses also examine the overall severity of an offense using a Crime Severity Scale that was created based on the statutory maximum prison term and the maximum fine allowed under Maryland law. Using statutory maxima, charges were grouped into 16 severity levels that range from 3 months or less to life imprisonment. Table 1 below summarizes the levels in the severity scale. Common Law offenses that do not specify a statutory maximum are classified according to their most similar offenses (e.g. “affray” is coded with disorderly conduct).

Charge Types

Preliminary results are presented across offense types and also for subsets of commonly-occurring crimes, including murder, rape, robbery firearm, weapon,assault, drug, burglary, theft, and other offenses. Other analyses examine broad offense groupings as outlined by the Maryland Sentencing Commission, which include Person, Property and Drug offenses. Person offenses include murder, rape, robbery, assault and other violent crimes. Drug crimes include all controlled dangerous substance offenses, including possession, manufacturing and intent to distribute. Property crimes include burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and related offenses, like arson or malicious destructions of property. Crimes that are not easily classified into these categories are included in an “other crime” category that includes crimes such as prostitution, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, traffic offenses and other uncommon offenses like gambling, obstruction, and licensing crimes.

Person: Includes homicide, assault, domestic violence, reckless endangerment, child abuse, kidnapping, human trafficking, false imprisonment, stalking, menacing, extortion, neglect, unlawful termination of pregnancy, violation of order of protection/restraining order, posting private image, harassment, and robbery.

Property: Includes arson, burglary, criminal exploitation, criminal mischief, forgery, fraud, cybercrime, defacing property, ID theft, motor vehicle theft, racketeering, robbery, tax evasion, theft, and trespassing.

Drugs: Includes possession of a controlled substance charges (including marijuana), possession with intent to distribute, distribution (including marijuana), manufacture of controlled substance (including marijuana), possession/sale of drug paraphernalia, public consumption of marijuana, and other drug charges. 

DUI: Includes Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol (DUI), Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID), Driving While Ability Impaired by Alcohol (DWAI), and Driving While Ability Impaired by Drugs (DWAID) charges.

Sex Offense: Includes sexual assault (including sexual assault on a child and sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust), sexual contact, sexual exploitation, incest, enticement, internet luring, sexual human trafficking, prostitution charges, indecent exposure and public indecency, and some invasion of privacy charges. 

Traffic: Includes careless driving, driver’s license violations, driving under restraint, driving without insurance, leaving the scene of an accident, reckless driving, and other vehicle/traffic charges.

Weapons: Includes possession of a weapon, including a handgun, carrying a concealed weapon, prohibited use of a weapon, illegal discharge, straw purchase, and other weapons charges.

Other: Includes obscenity, invasion of privacy, contributing to the delinquency of a  minor, abuse of public records, accessory to a crime, bribery or tampering, retaliation against judge/prosecutor, disarming a peace officer, disorderly conduct and official misconduct, riot, false report/emergency, escape, introduction/possession of contraband in detention, obstruction of an officer/official, endangering public transportation, perjury, resisting arrest, tampering with evidence, violation of bail bond or custody, alcohol offenses, bias motivated crimes, cruelty to animals, hunting/wildlife violations, gaming/gambling, eluding, wiretapping/eavesdropping/abuse of telephone, and  sex offender registration violations. 

Dispositions

Dismissed:  A case is dismissed when the criminal charges are terminated after the case is filed, either by the court or by the prosecutor. There can be several reasons for why a case is dismissed, including: a lack of evidence or unavailability of a witness as part of a plea agreement. This category also includes cases that are referred to diversion and successfully complete diversion programming.

Plea Dismissal: It is not uncommon for defendants to have multiple criminal cases going on at the same time. A defendant may be able to resolve such a situation by pleading guilty to some of the cases in exchange for others being dismissed. So, if a defendant pleads guilty to a case in exchange for the dismissal of two others, the case plead to would be categorized as plead guilty, whereas each of the cases dismissed would be categorized as “plea dismissals”.

Diversion: Diversion is an alternative solution that can take many forms, but it usually involves a suspension of formal criminal proceedings against a defendant, where after completion of certain conditions (such as treatment that addresses the underlying causes of criminal behavior), the defendant has their charges dismissed. Diversion takes place pre-plea.

Deferred Judgment: A deferred judgment is a temporary guilty plea. The defendant accepts responsibility such as service hours, probation, payment of restitution, or counseling or treatment related to their case. If they comply with the terms, their guilty plea is withdrawn and the case is dismissed. If they do not comply with the terms, then the case is reopened and subsequently sentenced. Deferred judgment is granted after a defendant takes a plea.

Plead Guilty: A defendant pleads guilty when they admit a factual basis for the plea and acknowledges guilt for a charge, sometimes in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

Found Guilty: A defendant is found guilty when found guilty at trial of any charge.

Acquitted: A case is acquitted when a judge or jury at trial determines that the defendant is not guilty of the crime for which the individual has been charged.

Sentences

Across this dashboard each case is categorized by its most serious sentence (in the order listed below). A sentence to incarceration includes any of the following sentences:

Prison, or Department of Corrections, is a sentence to state prison.

Community Corrections is a sentence to a community corrections facility, sometimes called a halfway house. 

Jail is a sentence to local incarceration, generally for misdemeanor cases.

*Non-incarceral sentences includes any of the following:*

Probation is a sentence to supervision of a defendant involving standard terms and conditions, as well as special conditions imposed by a court. 

Time served is a sentence of jail time that has already been completed by the defendant during the course of the case. 

Community service is a sentence to complete a certain number of hours of “useful public service”, generally run by local non-profit organizations.

Fines are the fixed monetary sanctions imposed by a judge based on the severity of the crime committed and the ability of the offender to pay.

Fees are charges imposed to cover system costs.

Other Dashboard Groupings

Attempted: Defendant is charged with engaging in conduct constituting a substantial step towards committing a crime. 

Violent Crime: Violent Crime includes charges categorized by the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy.

Demographics

Age: Defendant and victim age is calculated at the time of the case is filed.

Gender: Gender is defined as determined by law enforcement in the following categories: Male, Female, Other.

Ethnicity: For purposes of these indicators, ethnicity is defined as Hispanic or non-Hispanic.

Race: Race is defined as the racial category as determined by law enforcement in the following categories: Hispanic, Black, Native American, Asian, White, and Other.

The MCSAO captures defendant race, which includes White, Black, Asian, Native American (Indian), Hispanic, and Other. However, the data patterns suggest that Hispanic origin is not reliably recorded in the data. According to American Community Survey estimates, about 20.1% of Montgomery County residents identify as Hispanic. Using a data method outlined by the U.S. Census Bureau, we identify Hispanic individuals in the data by matching their last names to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Hispanic Surname List for which at least 75% of people in the U.S. with that last name identify as Hispanic. Even after identifying Hispanic defendants in this way, sample sizes for Hispanic, Asian and Native American defendants are not large enough to allow for detailed statistical analyses of these groups, so primary results in the report focus on Black-White comparisons.

Given historical inequities in the justice system, in presenting metrics, we have chosen to compare outcomes for people of color (including Black, Hispanic, and Native American individuals) against White individuals. We hope this provides clear information on the presence/extent of differences by race/ethnicity. This is not meant to imply that the rate for White individuals is an appropriate benchmark. In addition, we have significantly less confidence that Hispanic individuals are accurately identified in the current dataset.

Some race/ethnic groups have small sample sizes. To address issues of small sample size, see measures taken in the Methods section below.

The District Population, by Race/Ethnicity 2020 Census was generated from information publicly available through the United States Census Bureau. In 2020 the U.S. Census collected race and ethnicity as two questions: one for ethnicity, “Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino”, and another for race with six categories: “White,” “Black or African American,” “American Indian or Alaska Native,” “Asian”, “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander”, and “Some Other Race”. To best compare the general population to the population of individuals with criminal cases filed, we have used similar logic to categorize individuals. If the individual is identified as Hispanic and White, they are categorized as Hispanic. If the individual’s race is logged as Black, they are categorized as Black regardless of their ethnicity.  If the individual’s race is logged as Native American (“American Indian or Alaska Native” or “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander”) they are categorized as Native American regardless of their ethnicity. Individuals categorized as “Some Other Race” and Hispanic are categorized as Hispanic. Individuals that selected two or more races, regardless of their ethnicity, are categorized in the “Multiracial or Another Race” category.

Data Terms

Average: The average of a set of numbers is the sum of the numbers divided by the total number of values in the set. For example, to find the average of 24, 55, 17, 87 and 100, first find the sum of the numbers: 24 + 55 + 17 + 87 + 100 = 283 and divide by 5 to get 56.6.

Median: The median is the value separating the higher half of a data sample from the lower half. It may be thought of as the "middle" value of a data set. For example, in the data set {1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9}, the median is 6, the fourth number in the sample.

Outlier: An outlier is a data point that differs from other observations, is much bigger or much smaller.

Quintile: ​​A quintile is a statistical value of a data set that represents 20% of a given population, so the lowest quintile represents the lowest fifth of the data, while the upper quintile represents the highest fifth of the data.

Defendant Median Household Income: As a socioeconomic proxy, 2020 Census data was used to determine the median household income of the zip code where the defendant is reported to reside. We limited the defendant zip code to defendants convicted of felonies with Maryland addresses. We categorized the zip codes into quintiles, and compared the highest income quintile to the lowest income quintile. This socioeconomic proxy is used in:

• Felony Incarceration Differences by Socioeconomic Status - Median Household Income

Victim Median Household Income: As a socioeconomic proxy, 2020 Census data was used to determine the median household income of the zip code where the victim is reported to reside. We limited the victim zip code to victims of felonies with Maryland addresses. We categorized the zip codes into quintiles, and compared the  highest income quintile to the lowest income quintile. This socioeconomic proxy is used in:

• Violent Victimization in Low-Income Communities
• Person and Sex Offense Dismissals Across Socioeconomic Status
• Property Offense Dismissals Across Socioeconomic Status

Methods

Data for this report come from the MCSAO’s case management system and include information on misdemeanor and felony charges comprising criminal cases filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court between 2018 and 2022.

The MCSAO case management data are augmented in several ways. Using information on CJIS (criminal justice information system) codes, the data are matched to additional information from the Maryland Sentencing Commission (http://www.msccsp.org/Files/Guidelines/offensetable.pdf) to incorporate additional legal variables including statutory maximum punishments, detailed offense type(s), and felony and jailable offense indicators. As described below, U.S. Census Bureau data are also utilized to identify defendants who are likely to be of Hispanic origin.

We present data in eight sections, summarizing information about different parts of the prosecution process. In each section we present: 

1. General trends, an overview of cases and characteristics 
2. Indicators, selected from the menu of 55 Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPIs), which are designed to measure capacity and efficiency, community safety and well-being, and fairness and justice. PPIs offer an array of metrics that can be tracked over time to inform decision making and policy development.

To address issues of small sample size, we implemented the following measures:

1. Presented some data points annually instead of quarterly.
2. When the quarterly measure was less than 20, we took a three month moving average. 
3. When the annual number was less than 20, we excluded the metric.