Jurisdiction attributes and their effects on local prosecutor elections

• In Event: Prosecution in the Making IV: The Institution of Justice: Prosecutors, Politics, and Legitimacy

Abstract

The United States is one of the only countries to elect local prosecutors. These criminal justice agents are granted wide discretion over criminal case processing decisions including filing charges, amending charges, and negotiating pleas. More broadly, they are often cited as being drivers of mass incarceration and racial disparities through their decision making in criminal cases. Despite the importance of this role, prosecutors have historically not been subject to the same public scrutiny as other elected officials. This is slowly changing given the rising public awareness of the ways prosecutors shape criminal justice policy and incarceration rates. Even as prosecutors are becoming more preeminent public figures, few empirical assessments of these elections exist due to lacking data related to this topic. To address this wide gap in scholarship, the current study relies on primary data including information about elected prosecutor candidates, jurisdiction demographics and attributes, and about primary and general local prosecutor elections. The main focus of the present study is to better understand how jurisdiction features like population demographics, size, and crime rates influence turnover in these critical elections.

Authors

• Maria Arndt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Tania Jahanpanah, John Jay College of Criminal Justice