Prosecution and Racial Justice

A New Approach to Prosecutorial Management

PRJ’s staff of researchers and former prosecutors developed a series of performance indicators—select statistics that provide insight into how a system is operating—that focus on four key discretion points in the prosecutorial process: initial case screening, charging, plea offers, and final disposition.

Taken together, the indicators describe with meaningful specificity prosecutors’ exercise of discretion at each point in the process, thus providing managers greater opportunity to assess staff performance and provide supervision.
Once data has been collected and analyzed, PRJ’s process encourages district attorneys to consider implementing policy changes to address any imbalances that have been identified.

Case Study

Data revealed that Milwaukee prosecutors chose to prosecute 59 percent of white defendants charged with possession of drug paraphernalia compared to 73 percent of non-whites arrested for the same crime. Responding to this finding, District Attorney John Chisholm encouraged staff to view possession of crack cocaine paraphernalia less as a criminal matter than as evidence that the arrested individual had a problem with drug use. A new policy directed staff to decline these cases whenever it was reasonable to do so and to refer the arrested individuals to drug treatment; prosecutors who still seek to press charges must seek a supervisor’s approval. Although these policy changes do not directly focus on racial issues, soon after they were implemented the racial disparity in drug paraphernalia charges disappeared.

Why This Program is Necessary

Prosecutors in the United States have an unrivaled influence on criminal justice outcomes, making key decisions like whether to prosecute or what charges to press. Many people fear that their broad discretion may result in unfairly disparate treatment toward people of color. Statistics show that African Americans, for example, account for 39 percent of the population within the criminal justice system, even though they make up only 13 percent of the national population. In partnership with PRJ, the district attorneys of Charlotte, Milwaukee, and San Diego are working to sustain the public’s confidence in the prosecutorial process by ensuring that neither race nor ethnicity is producing inappropriate racial disparities. The new model of internal oversight they are developing will serve as an important model for prosecutors everywhere.

For more information, contact program director Wayne McKenzie.