A referral to the District Attorney's (DA) Office occurs when law enforcement presents an individual suspected of a crime to the DA's Office for review and consideration for potential charges, generally following an arrest. The DA’s Office decides whether to file charges – a formal accusation that a specific person has committed a specific crime – based on the evidence and reasonable likelihood of conviction. Referrals accepted means the DA's Office has decided to file criminal charges after review of the case.

This section presents data on the number of cases referred by law enforcement agencies to the DA’s Office for review and the percent of referrals accepted for prosecution. For more in-depth analyses on race and prosecution, please see our series of Race and Prosecutions reports .

Why is this important?  The DA’s Office makes decisions based on the cases they receive from law enforcement; the DA's Office is not responsible for arresting or citing individuals. The office may decide not to file a case for a number of reasons, such as acceptance into a pre-charge diversion program, insufficient evidence, or when the charges did not rise to the level of a crime.