Crisis, Continuity, and Change: Prosecutorial Change Under COVID-19 in the United States

• In Event: Criminal Justice System Involvement and Policy

Abstract

Sudden crises can challenge routine work assumptions, values, and methods, and allow more fundamental organizational changes to emerge. We conducted thirty-five semi-structured interviews with local prosecutors and their staff in the United States. We identified some key changes they experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including how they made sense of them. Our findings suggest that prosecutors’ traditional conceptions of their role and purpose help explain why initial changes to increased telework and virtual court appearances, charge reductions, limits to pre-trial detention, and more lenient plea offers, did not seem to have endured post-pandemic. More generally, our study highlights some key obstacles to prosecutorial reforms that try to create a less adversarial and punitive criminal legal system.

Authors

• Marthinus Christoffel Koen, SUNY Oswego

• James J. Willis, George Mason University