National Public Registry of Active-Warrants: A Policy Proposal
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June 2015 27
THERE ARE OVER two million active
criminal warrants in the United States on
any given day (Bierie, 2014). Over 1 mil-
lion of these warrants are for felonies and
approximately 100,000 are for serious vio-
lent crime (Bierie, 2014). Law enforcement
agencies invest significant resources in pursu-
ing fugitives and processing warrant arrests
(Goldkamp, 2012). For example, Guynes and
Wolf (2004) examined police departments
across three counties and found that nearly
half of all arrests emerged from warrant
investigations. Similar patterns are observed
in federal law enforcement. The U.S. Marshals
Service (USMS) makes approximately 150,000
warrant-arrests per year, a figure that repre-
sents just over half of all arrests made by the
U.S. Department of Justice (U.S. Marshals,
2013). Warrant investigations, then, represent
a major component of policing at the local as
well as the federal level.
Warrant investigations are important to the
criminal justice system in part because they
are pervasive, but also because fugitives rep-
resent not only an outrage to the rule of law,
they are also a serious threat to public safety
(Fugitives, 2001, p.1). Fugitives are presumed
risky because an elevated propensity for crime
likely drove many into the status of fugitive
in the first place. They are also presumed risky
because being a fugitive adds new structures
that likely amplify this underlying propensity.
That is,
without resort to the police and the
courts, [fugitives] take the law into their
own hands. [Fugitives], even more than
(unwanted) criminals, can neither use the
law nor find stable work in noncriminal
enterprises. As a result, crime becomes a
natural source of income, moreover, the
costs of using violence to solve disputes
decreases for people who are already out-
side the law. (Tabarrock, 2012, p.463)
The evidence to date suggests support for
these assertions. Peterson (2006), for example,
found that 22 percent of domestic violence
fugitives were rearrested for a new crime prior
to capture for their active warrant. Though
less dramatic, Guynes and Wolf (2004) found
that 8 percent of fugitives with warrants for
violent crimes were arrested for a new crime
prior to their warrant being served.
The literature above suggests that war-
rants are important in terms of public
safety, budgets, and opportunity costs for
police time allocated to warrant investiga-
tions. Increasing the efficiency of warrant
investigations would return substantial ben-
efits to taxpayers. This includes strategies or
technologies that would increase voluntary
surrender among wanted persons (Flannery
& Kretschmar, 2012). It also includes finding
ways to increase the ability of citizens to offer
tips (Miles, 2005). And finally, it includes
addressing other high-cost problems within
this arena of enforcement, such as the risk of
false arrests due to error in warrant databases.
In short, the great cost of warrant investiga-
tions suggests an equally great opportunity
for police and communities; opportunities
for law enforcement and citizens to work
together toward increasing the efficiency and
effectiveness of fugitive apprehension.
Opportunities Created
by a Registry
Warrant investigations present several oppor-
tunities to the police as well as the public. The
David M. Bierie
University of Maryland, College Park
first opportunity is that many fugitives do not
know that they have a warrant-but might
turn themselves in if they did. Flannery and
Kretschmar (2012) show some evidence of this
in their analysis of the U.S. Marshals Service
program, Fugitive Safe Surrender. They found
that over 40,000 fugitives voluntarily surren-
dered across 10 cities when given a platform
for doing so. They also found that an additional
8,000 attempted to turn themselves in because
they believed they had a warrant, although
none could be found by law enforcement
officers running the program. This research
implies that (a) there are a nontrivial number
of people with warrants who would willingly
contact law enforcement and process their
warrant if given a medium to facilitate that
action, and (b) people make errors in assess-
ing their own warrant status. Given the lack
of certainty among wanted persons observed
in this research, we must wonder how many
other fugitives also would have volunteered
if they had known about their warrant-how
many are unintentionalfugitives.
A second opportunity is tied to the goal
of locating fugitives who would not choose
to self-surrender (intentional fugitives). Many
fugitive-apprehensions derive from the
assistance of other citizens as informants or
1 It is important to note that the Safe Surrender
program added motivation for fugitives to sur-
render, either through the promise of leniency, the
threat of a pending sweep by law enforcement, or
the convenience of fast processing. However, these
aspects of the program are not the point of referenc-
ing Safe Surrender here. Rather, Safe Surrender is
used to illustrate the assertion that (a) there is value
in making it easier for citizens to turn themselves
in, and (b) some citizens mistakenly believe they
have warrants.
June 2015
27](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/fedpro79&div=9&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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National Public Registry of Active-Warrants: A Policy Proposal
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