Prosecutor's Case Selection Problem - 'Career Criminals' and Other Concerns (From Dealing With Dangerous Offenders, Volume 2, 1983, by Daniel McGillis et al - See NCJ-92277)

• NCJ Number: 92287
• Author(s): B Forst
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 23 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Available on microfiche as NCJ-92277. Presented at the Conference on Public Danger, Dangerous Offenders and the Criminal Justice System, Harvard University, February 11-12, 1982

Annotation

This article examines prosecutors' policies for screening arrests and determining how much and what kind of attention to give to each of those accepted for prosecution.

Abstract

Increasing the prosecutor's ability to reduce crime requires that the prosecutor first be willing to accept cases involving the most criminally active offenders and work to convict them even when these cases may be otherwise unattractive. This may be possible only after the district attorney establishes a system of accountability within the office that offers some incentive for prosecutors to work toward the conviction and incarceration of those offenders. Procedures that can lead to the incarceration of the most active offenders include (1) identifying the factors associated with recidivism, (2) basing case selection and targeting decisions at least partially on those factors, (3) identifying for the judge those defendants who are predictably the most crime prone so this may be considered in bail and sentencing decisions, (4) ensuring that witnesses and evidence are properly managed and avoiding delays that may impose costs on witnesses or otherwise jeopardize the prospect of obtaining a conviction, and (5) considering the defendant's crime proneness in deciding whether to accept a plea or take the case to trial. The current procedures for dealing with repeat offenders, which use arbitrary selection criteria and feature the career criminal unit as a centerpiece, may be largely ceremonial, ineffective, and costly. The prosecutor's ability to deal with the most criminally active offenders can also be enhanced by the research community. Research is instrumental in the development of crime prediction models and in determining how various prosecution strategies affect conviction probabilities for specific kinds of cases, how much each strategy costs, and the actual terms of incarceration that follow each strategy. Twenty-nine notes are provided.