New Poll: D.A. Ogg’s Approach “Likely Creating More Crime”, According To Harris County Voters

Topline:

• By a 26 percentage point margin, Harris County voters–including most Democrats and most Republicans–say that Kim Ogg’s approach to prosecution is likely creating more crime. 

• Only 29% of voters said that it is “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that Ogg’s approach is creating more crime.

Harris County is facing a crisis-level court backlog because District Attorney Kim Ogg’s draconian approach to prosecuting low-level misdemeanor offenses like drug possession. Last year, her office even prosecuted 200 people for marijuana possession. 

The result: While her office is distracted by throwing people in jail for low-level, nonviolent offenses, serious violent crimes go unpunished and the people who commit them are reoffending while their cases languish in Ogg’s broken criminal justice system.

According to the Houston Chronicle writing in September, “The number of criminal cases pending before Harris County courts stands at more than 94,000. That includes 41,000 misdemeanors and 53,000 felonies, numbers so high that if prosecutors stopped filing criminal charges tomorrow, it would take misdemeanor judges a year to clear their dockets; felony judges would need 19 months, based on their average pace for closing cases since 2017.”

Ogg’s inability to prioritize harms public safety by clogging the courts and making it harder to obtain swift convictions for people accused of crimes like rape and murder. It also undermines public safety by actually creating more crime, according to a recent report from NYU’s Public Safety Lab.

Historically, prosecutors across the country have sought, as a default response, jail or prison time for a range of low level offenses, including drug possession, disorderly conduct and shoplifting. The assumption has been that imprisonment has a deterrent effect, meaning it decreases future crimes. 

More recently, a new crop of safety-focused prosecutors across the country including in a number of Texas counties, have taken a different approach, deprioritizing prison for low-level offenses and using it only as a last resort. These prosecutors argue that this approach leads to more safety and more justice, by holding people accountable while keeping them in their jobs, supporting their families, and contributing to the community.

Until recently, neither assumption has rarely been rigorously tested. Recently, though, the NYU study looked at tens of thousands of people who were arrested for nonviolent, low level offenses, some of whom were prosecuted and some of whom had their cases dropped at arraignment.

The researchers used sophisticated statistical techniques to isolate the effect of being prosecuted for a nonviolent misdemeanor on the likelihood that someone would be arrested again within the following two years.

When comparing the group of people who were prosecuted to the group who weren’t prosecuted, the researchers found “that defendants prosecuted for nonviolent misdemeanors had significantly higher risks of subsequent arrest and prosecution than those not prosecuted. These later arrests included arrests for violent and felony offenses.”

The numbers are staggering. Not prosecuting people arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors “reduced the number of subsequent felony complaints by 75 percent, relative to comparable prosecuted defendants.”

Let’s repeat that for emphasis: People who were prosecuted for nonviolent misdemeanor arrests went on to commit four times as many felonies as people who weren’t punished.

This defies conventional wisdom, but it’s also intuitive. Being prosecuted for a nonviolent misdemeanor severely disrupts a person’s life. 

Time spent in jail awaiting trial and on court appearances makes it harder to meet work and family obligations, and criminal records make it harder to find employment and housing. 

All of these factors can make it harder for someone to live on the right side of the law and, in the worst cases, leave them with few options for survival other than a life of crime.

That brings us back to Kim Ogg. Not only are her misdemeanor prosecutions clogging the courts and making it harder to hold violent criminals accountable, but her policy of prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanors may actually be responsible for some people committing violent felonies in the first place. 

So, faced with rising violent crime in Harris County, how can Kim Ogg possibly defend these prosecutions? 

According to a new poll of 422 likely voters in Harris County, the answer is that she can’t.

After learning about the findings from the Public Safety Lab’s study, and the fact that Ogg continues to prosecute and seek jail time in low-level non-violent cases, Harris County voters–including most Democrats and most Republicans - said that Kim Ogg is creating more crime. 

Only 29% of voters said that it is “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that Ogg is creating more crime. 

Houston Watch asked District Attorney Ogg whether she agrees with Harris County voters that her policies are creating more crime. She did not respond to our request for comment. 

Polling Methodology:

Our poll of 422 Harris County likely voters was conducted on the Data For Progress infrastructure, and the sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is +/- 5 percentage points.