Rival Attacks Brooklyn Prosecutor Over Conviction Rate Charles J. Hynes, who is running for a seventh term as Brooklyn district attorney, has a long record to scrutinize, and his opponent in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, Kenneth P. Thompson, has seized on one statistic that has barely improved since Mr. Hynes took office: his felony conviction rate. Charles J. Hynes's prosecutors recorded a felony conviction rate - which includes both guilty pleas and convictions at trial - of 58 percent last year, according to city statistics. Mr. Hynes's prosecutors recorded a felony conviction rate - which includes both guilty pleas and convictions at trial - of 58 percent last year, according to city statistics. That topped only the Bronx, which has a notoriously ineffectual criminal justice system. The year before, the Brooklyn rate was 55 percent, the lowest in New York City. In Mr. Hynes's first year, the rate was 56 percent. Mr. Thompson's campaign has added these numbers to his other criticisms of Mr. Hynes's performance, including how he has handled allegations of sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and how his office prosecuted dozens of murder cases built by a police detective whose tactics are now under review. "If Mr. Hynes spent less time playing politics and more time keeping our streets safe in the face of rising violent crime, his office's reputation wouldn't be tarnished by prosecutorial misconduct or the lowest felony conviction rate in the city," Mr. Thompson's campaign spokesman, James Freedland, said. He said he was referring to the average of the previous two years" rates. Among defense lawyers and other observers of Brooklyn's criminal justice system, Mr. Hynes's record in the courtroom is more nuanced. Mr. Hynes's office has acquired a nationwide reputation for innovation, for progressive programs that have kept low-level offenders out of prison, and thus might drag down his statistics. District attorneys across the country have resisted the use of conviction rates as a measure of success, Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said. Mr. Hynes, who sits on the association's board, is at the forefront of that resistance. He and his deputies argue that he has pursued a holistic, humane view of justice that is not reflected in his conviction rates. Mr. Hynes and his deputies said that he favored dismissing charges or reducing felony to misdemeanor charges in some cases to avoid saddling low-level offenders with criminal records that could later prevent them from getting jobs, and that he had diverted thousands of offenders to drug and mental health treatment programs rather than try to send them to prison. City statistics show that Brooklyn sent 565 new felony and misdemeanor cases to drug treatment courts last year, far more than any other borough. "These little numbers that you're looking at are one piece of an overall strategy and philosophy," Anne Swern, the first assistant district attorney, said. It's part of a prosecution philosophy to prosecute cases so that justice is done and the public is safe. It is not clear, however, whether Brooklyn's diversion programs, which have been copied to some extent in other boroughs, fully account for the office's low conviction rate. The State Division of Criminal Justice Services reported that 0.9 percent of felony defendants were diverted last year, which would not change Brooklyn's ranking. But another Hynes deputy, Dino Amoroso, said he believed those figures were understated; he said 5 percent to 10 percent of felony offenders processed by the office were successfully diverted. In Queens, the felony conviction rate was 68 percent last year, just behind Manhattan at 69 percent. The rate for Staten Island was 63 percent. Advocates of alternative-sentencing programs like those run by Mr. Hynes's office point to studies that show they are more cost-effective than prison terms and can help reduce the chances that offenders will relapse. Defendants who successfully complete the office's drug treatment program are allowed to withdraw guilty pleas and have charges against them dismissed; the more than 1,300 defendants who have graduated from the program since it was established in 1990 have a reconviction rate barely half that of offenders sent to prison, according to the district attorney's office and a 2003 study of the program by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. "The Brooklyn programs and the Brooklyn approach to alternatives to incarceration are far ahead of efforts in other boroughs, therefore focusing only on statistics misses the complexity of what it really takes to resolve cases," said Steven Banks, the chief attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which represents indigent defendants across the city. But he added, "That's not to say that more can't be done."