EASTON, Pa. — As he runs for a second term, Northampton County District Attorney Terry Houck has taken credit for slashing crime rates — citing a dip in the number of cases his office has seen since the beginning of his term.
“We’ve reduced our crime by 20 to 25 percent,” he told prospective voters at a candidate forum last month. “Despite a very clear national increase in criminal activity, as a result of certain soft approaches to prosecution and law enforcement by other prosecution offices.”
State crime data, meanwhile, paints a more complicated picture.
- Running for a second term, Terry Houck takes credit for cutting crime by 20-25%, based on the number of cases coming across his desk
- State crime data shows serious crime down roughly 10% from the start of his term through 2022, and up 17% from 2021 to 2022
- One expert said the number of cases coming through the DA's office isn't a reliable measure of crime
Statistics from the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System, or UCRS, show the number of serious crimes down sharply in 2020 compared with 2019, followed by a more modest drop in 2021, in line with trends Houck reported.
The district attorney’s office averaged just shy of 4,300 cases per year in the period before Houck took office, he said. In 2020, that number dropped to 3,346 cases, and stayed fairly consistent in the years that followed.
However, the two data sets diverge in 2022. While the district attorney’s office saw cases increase less than 2% relative to the prior year, Northampton County saw a nearly 17% increase in serious crime, according to the state UCRS.
The Pennsylvania system, like the FBI-administered national reporting program it mirrors, breaks crime reporting into two parts.
Part one includes “serious crimes” such as murder, burglary and vehicle theft. Part two consists of less-serious cases that Houck said are less likely to reach his desk.
State and federal data alike rely on local law enforcement agencies to accurately report the number of offenses they investigate.
Deb Dreisbach, a retired FBI investigator and assistant professor who leads the criminal justice program at Penn State Lehigh Valley, said the number of cases a DA handles is not an accurate measure of crime.
“From my past experience, there's a lot of variables that go into when you bring a case before a prosecutor, whether it's federal or local,” she said. “That doesn’t jive.”
Houck said that the fact both datasets show fewer serious offenses in recent years than in 2019, before his term began, confirms his success in fighting crime.
Though statewide data shows part one offenses up slightly from 2019 to 2022, similar crimes are down 10% in Northampton County over the same period.
“It's simple math," Houck said. "You have numbers that are lower over a three-year period than they were in the three years before that.
“I don't think there's any one gauge as to whether or not crime is going up or down.”
Houck's opponent in the Democratic primary for district attorney, Stephen Baratta, called his claim to have reduced crime "disingenuous."
"I don't think it truly reflects the success of crimefighting in Northampton County merely because the number of [cases] that were filed after COVID had gone down," Baratta said Wednesday.
