Prosecutorial Misconduct by County in Pennsylvania

We evaluated misconduct claims by county to see what if any differences there were in the rates of misconduct claims or their dispositions. To standardize these rates across counties, we use the statistic of annual incidence of prosecutorial misconduct found per million residents (“Mry”) using population estimates for each county for each year between 2000 - 2016. This is essentially a measure of “per capita” that takes changes in population over time into account. This index allows us to compare observed rates of opinion frequency as well as frequencies of specific dispositions between counties.

Notes:
Opinions with PM Claims: Total opinions identified (from 2000-2016) that contain at least one claim of Prosecutorial Misconduct
Opinions PM Found: Total opinions identified (from 2000-2016) in which at least one claim of Prosecutorial Misconduct was “found” by a court
PM Found: Percentage of PM related opinions with found claims.
PM Opinions per Mry: Number of PM related opinions per year per million residents
PM Found per Mry: Number of PM opinions with found claims per year per million residents.