Prosecutor institutions and incentives
Criminal prosecutors must do a complex job, one that is crucial to public safety and the quality of justice.Unfortunately, they must do so under circumstances that are tilted toward failure. The typical local prosecutor,working within the current legal framework, must “fly blind” and “fly solo.” The...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2017
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| In: |
Criminology, criminal justice, law & society
Year: 2017, Volume: 18, Issue: 3, Pages: 85-100 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Criminal prosecutors must do a complex job, one that is crucial to public safety and the quality of justice.Unfortunately, they must do so under circumstances that are tilted toward failure. The typical local prosecutor,working within the current legal framework, must “fly blind” and “fly solo.” The prosecutor flies blind because so little information is available about overall trends in case processing, prevention programs, corrections costs, and voter concerns about public safety. Prosecutors can see some details about individual cases but not so much about systemic effects of their work. Supervisors within larger prosecutor offices also operate in the dark about many case-level choices of line prosecutors. It is equally troubling that prosecutors fly solo. Judges, police, defense attorneys, and community groups have relatively little influence over the diversion, charge selection, and caseresolution choices of individual prosecutors or office policies on these topics. To address the problems of flyingblind and flying solo, improvements in the information available to prosecutors and changes in the partners they consult hold the greatest promise for improving prosecutors’ work. Prosecutor institutions and incentives |
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| ISSN: | 2332-886X |