Court Delays and Criminal Recidivism: Results from Danish Administrative Data and a Policy Reform

Delays at court are an everlasting and potentially consequential reality of criminal justice systems, although most would agree that the timely adjudication of cases is needed from both administrative, judicial, and individual perspectives. This paper uses administrative data and a policy reform in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJustice quarterly Vol. 41; no. 5; pp. 647 - 671
Main Author Andersen, Lars Højsgaard
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 28.07.2024
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Administrative data
court delays
Crime
Criminal justice
Criminality
Detention
natural experiment
Recidivism
Reforms
time to adjudication
Denmark
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Summary:Delays at court are an everlasting and potentially consequential reality of criminal justice systems, although most would agree that the timely adjudication of cases is needed from both administrative, judicial, and individual perspectives. This paper uses administrative data and a policy reform in Denmark in 2007 to measure the unconfounded association between court delays - or, more specifically, time to adjudication - and criminal recidivism within 5 years. Results show that although court delays do not push more people into recidivism, the delays matter for how many crimes recidivists end up being convicted of. Also, criminality tends to be muted during the period from charge to adjudication (even in a context with low use of pretrial detention and no bail system), whereby court delays also matter for the timing of new crimes - a finding with important theoretical implications.
ISSN:0741-8825
1745-9109
DOI:10.1080/07418825.2023.2260451