Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s conviction rate has plunged every year since he took office — and he’s hiding the ugly numbers from the public, The Post has learned.
Just 35% of felony cases – 6,871 out of 19,602 crimes – ended in convictions last year, down from 37% in 2023, 40% in 2022, and 42% in 2021 before Bragg took office, according to data from the state Division of Criminal Justice.
And those numbers are way down from 2019, the last year before New York’s woke discovery reform laws took effect, when 64% of felonies resulted in convictions.
Even when the Democratic prosecutor’s office did win a conviction, 66% of the time it was a charge downgraded to a misdemeanor or even a non-criminal violation.
And the number of felony cases Bragg simply refused to prosecute has nearly doubled since he took over – from 7% in 2022, to 8% in 2023 and 12% in 2024.
Bragg ordered prosecutors to stop seeking prison for hordes of crimes including armed robberies and drug dealing in his Day 1 memo.
“These outcomes are by design,” Rafael Mangual, legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Post. “Bragg’s philosophy is that incarceration should be the last resort. And he won’t even pursue prison terms beyond 20 years, irrespective of the offense.”
Mangual says Bragg fails to acknowledge that “prison is where we get the public safety benefits – because individuals who are currently engaged in criminal conduct are going to be taken out of commission.”
Misdemeanor convictions are tanking too, plummeting from 24% in 2022, to 21% in 2023 and 17% in 2024, records show.
Bragg declined to prosecute 9% of misdemeanors in 2022, then 19% in 2023 and 31% in 2024, according to the data.
But the public would never know any of this because the DA’s office quietly yanked the data dashboard from its website.
It’s been “under construction” since October.
“They hid it knowing that DA Bragg is going to be up for re-election,” slammed outraged West Village resident Scott Evans. “They’re hiding behind the curtain of ‘there’s no data to talk about.’ “
Evans says he’s pressed Bragg’s representatives about the missing page at community meetings – only to be told they don’t want the public to “misinterpret the data.”
A spokesperson for Bragg told The Post he’s working with the other boroughs’ DA’s on how to present the data, without adding more specifics.
Before it was pulled, the DA’s office touted its data dashboard as “groundbreaking.”
“The Manhattan DA’s office is committed to enhancing transparency in the criminal justice system,” the website boldly used to claim. “Our data dashboard, the first in New York State, provides the public with comprehensive data about our office’s prosecutions.”
Case data was updated weekly.
“This is exactly the wrong time to take that tool away from the public, as we come into an election year and they try to evaluate whether that’s the direction they want the DA’s office be moving,” said Mangual.
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