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Shelby County Criminal Justice System

Law theme, mallet of the judge, law enforcement officers, evidence-based cases and documents taken into account

March 2025

Full report
Executive summary
Press release

On February 28, 2024, Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally sent a letter requesting the Comptroller of the Treasury and the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) investigate the criminal justice system in Shelby County. The Lieutenant Governor expressed concerns about:

1. The length of time it takes to dispose of cases.
2. The number of career criminals committing additional crimes while awaiting case disposition.
3. The apparent discrepancy between the charges at arrest and the charges for which defendants are prosecuted.
4. The final disposition of cases not meting out proportional judgment, resulting in an overall lack of deterrent to crime.

The Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) completed this investigation as directed by the Comptroller and received assistance from the AOC with data procurement.

The report analyzes General Sessions and Criminal Court processes through a combination of case observations and a review of aggregate data. OREA interviewed over 70 individuals, spent over 100 hours at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center conducting research and observing court proceedings for over 1,000 cases, and obtained and analyzed datasets from at least 22 state and local entities. OREA also analyzed thousands of felony charges that were filed in Shelby County between January 1, 2018, and June 30, 2024. When possible, OREA compared these charges to felony charges filed in the 10 other most populated counties in Tennessee over the same time period. The study highlights the challenge of tracking cases due to a lack of a unique identifier for cases as they move through the judicial system.

Key conclusion:

There are numerous opportunities for enhancing the transparency, accessibility, and usability of aggregate data on the operations and outcomes of the Shelby County criminal justice system. The cases observed by OREA illustrate in a transparent, accessible, and understandable way the path those cases followed through the system. However, the Shelby County criminal justice system processes thousands of cases every year, and a similar degree of transparency, accessibility, and usability of publicly reported data on the overall operations and outcomes of the system does not currently exist. The result is that the public cannot assess overall trends and patterns; the public cannot see the big picture.

The new report includes three recommendations:

1. Agencies within the Shelby County Criminal Justice System should collect and publicly report data for key metrics on a regular basis. OREA developed 18 recommended metrics for agencies in the system, including total days for case disposition, number of continuances, rearrest status, plea offers, and reconvictions. 

2. Shelby County’s General Sessions Judges and Criminal Court Judges should explore methods for reducing delays in processing criminal cases. When considering methods to reduce delays, the judges should study the Effective Criminal Case Management project, a national initiative designed to discover and document effective practices that drive high performance in handling criminal cases in state courts.

3. The Tennessee General Assembly could create a study committee to review this report and make recommendations for greater transparency of the criminal justice system in Shelby County and possibly in other counties. While the new report’s focus is on the Shelby County criminal justice system, the key conclusion about greater transparency also applies to other counties in Tennessee. The report highlights tools from Justice Counts (a national initiative led by the Council of State Governments and an office within the U.S. Department of Justice) and Florida’s Criminal Justice Data Transparency initiative as models that could be adopted in Tennessee.