Boundaries of Violence: How Prosecutors Decide Between Violent and Nonviolent Charges

• In Event: 50614 - Organizations as Legal Actors

Abstract

While researchers have revealed a growing bifurcation in criminal justice policy in recent years, with reforms targeting primarily drug crimes and other nonviolent offenses, less is known about how front-line practitioners use their discretion to draw these boundaries between violent and nonviolent defendants. This article examines the role of prosecutors in the social construction of violence. Drawing on a larger ethnographic study in two midwestern District Attorney’s offices, I argue that prosecutors construct the boundary of violence by relying not just on the law, but also on their perceptions of and interactions with the people involved in the criminal case process. More specifically, I find that three main factors shape how prosecutors think and talk about the decision to charge someone with Battery (a violent offense) or Disorderly Conduct (a nonviolent offense): 1) their perceptions of defendants based on the details of the case, the defendant’s criminal record, as well as prosecutors’ own beliefs about “normal” violent behavior, 2) their interactions with victims, and 3) their expectations of how potential jurors will perceive a case. These findings highlight how reform efforts targeting “nonviolent” offenses reinforce and reify an imagined boundary of violence that is not concrete and immutable, but rather socially constructed through the discretionary decisions of prosecutors and other courtroom actors.

Author

• Chiara Clio Packard, University of Utah