The Philadelphia criminal justice system is far from perfect.
According to a 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer investigation, the City has one of the country’s lowest conviction rates, and thousands of cases fall apart each year. The report also found that witnesses have been afraid to testify and that there is an increasing number of fugitives from court.
In an effort to improve the system, the City is rolling out a new prosecution model that has great potential.
Under the new plan, prosecutors will be assigned to specific geographic regions, structuring prosecution in a manner more similar to how police detective bureaus are organized. As a result, prosecutors will be better able to familiarize themselves with a part of the city — likely fostering more community engagement and closer working relationships with police officers. The community-based structure will also allow repeat offenders to be more efficiently prosecuted.
Additionally, hundreds of preliminary hearings in the new system will take place in the Criminal Justice Center, rather than in police stations across the city. Police officers will therefore have an easier time testifying in court, since currently they are often scheduled to be at hearings in different sections of the city simultaneously.
The new model won’t make the City’s criminal justice system perfect. But we anticipate the structural changes will lead to substantive ones.
