When political activists talk of “Criminal Justice Reform” here in Indiana, really not much to reform once you look at the hard data coming out of the states court system.
Here’s some good court data via Times of Northwest Indiana:
In 2015, there were 1,160 jury trials across the state’s 92 counties out of 1,361,787 new criminal, civil, infraction and ordinance violations filed in Indiana.
17.4 percent of all Indiana cases were dismissed without trial. Another 15.7 percent were resolved through a guilty plea and an equal portion saw a fine paid through a motorist violations bureau.
Judges presided over 61,189 bench trials, or 4.4 percent of the total cases, and disposed of another 14.3 percent without trial.
Another reason for the relative paucity of jury trials is that traffic tickets and ordinance violations, which seldom go to a jury, comprised 43 percent of the court cases filed statewide in 2015.
There were just 63,582 felonies (5 percent of all cases) charged to Indiana’s 6.6 million residents, including 232 murders.
Hoosier Econ 