Race and Workload Interactions in Prosecutorial Decision-Making

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 4: Criminal Justice System Actors (2)

Abstract

Some scholarship suggests that prosecutorial workload affects criminal case processing, yet less is known about how workload pressure interacts with race to influence prosecutorial decision-making. This paper examines whether higher prosecutor caseloads are associated with slower case processing and harsher case outcomes, and whether these effects vary across defendants by race. We looked to see if prosecutorial workload was conceptualized as a binding organizational constraint that structured discretionary decisions under strong time constraints.

Using case-level data on adult criminal cases with valid filing and disposition dates, the analysis links individual cases to attorney-level workload measured at the prosecutor–month level. Caseload is defined as the number of active cases assigned to a prosecutor in a given calendar month and modeled both continuously and categorically to capture potential nonlinear effects. The primary outcome is time to disposition, measured as the number of days from filing to final disposition. A secondary outcome is a binary indicator of any incarceration imposed at disposition.

Models adjust for offense severity and degree, offense type, defendant age, sex, race/ethnicity, income-related characteristics, court or division indicators, and filing year. Accounting for gender and income-related measures substantially attenuates observed racial disparities in both processing time and incarceration, though race remains statistically significant in some specifications. Interaction models indicate that workload pressure may amplify racial disparities in case outcomes; higher caseloads associated with larger race-based differences in processing speed and incarceration. Across all specifications, prosecutorial workload remains the largest and most consistent contributor to both outcomes.

Organizational constraint interacts with race and may shape discretionary outcomes; this paper contributes to sociological theories of inequality and organizational decision-making while providing policy-relevant evidence for staffing and workload standards.

Author

• sven Smith, stetson