De‐prosecution and death: A comment on Hogan (2022)

Abstract A recent article presents a synthetic control model showing de‐prosecution in Philadelphia in the mid to late 2010s greatly increased the city's homicides. We point out several potential problems with the analysis and re‐estimate the relationship between de‐prosecution and homicide under different model specifications. We reproduce the author's results after addressing these issues and find that the effect presented in Hogan occurs only in certain model specifications and other decisions that maximize the reported effect of de‐prosecution on homicide counts.