Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:33:49.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prosecutorial Discretion: The Effects of Uncertainty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In this paper the author analyzes the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to “go forward” with charges. The author examines the relationship between sources of uncertainty in decision making and the initial decision to begin the criminalization process. Organizational theory bearing on uncertainty avoidance provides the perspective guiding the analysis. The author uses a maximum likelihood procedure to estimate the net effects on the probability of prosecution of a set of variables measuring uncertainty emerging within the backdrop of prosecutorial concern for obtaining a conviction at a jury trial.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1984 Midwest Sociological Association Meeting in Chicago. I am grateful to Jack Ladinsky, John Hagan, and John Marcotte for their helpful comments and suggestions. This research was funded by Grant 82IJ-CX-0051 from the National Institute of Justice. I wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments. Of course, any errors are the responsibility of the author.

References

References

BLUMBERG, Abraham (1967) “The Practice of Law as a Confidence Game: Organizational Cooptation of a Profession,” 1 Law & Society Review 15.Google Scholar
COHEN, Jacob, and Patricia, COHEN (1975) Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
CANNAVALE, Frank J., and William D., FALCON (1976) Witness Cooperation. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
CYERT, Richard M., and James G., MARCH (1963) A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
EISENSTEIN, James, and Herbert, JACOB (1977) Felony Justice: An Organizational Analysis of Criminal Courts. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
GROSMAN, Brian (1969) The Prosecutor: An Inquiry into the Exercise of Discretion. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
HAGAN, John (1982) “The Corporate Advantage: A Study of the Involvement of Corporate and Individual Victims in a Criminal Justice System,” 60 Social Forces 993.Google Scholar
HALL, Donald E. (1975) “Role of the Victim in the Prosecution and Disposition of Criminal Cases,” 28 Vanderbilt Law Review 931.Google Scholar
HANUSHEK, Eric A., and John E., JACKSON (1977) Statistical Methods for Social Scientists. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
JACOBY, Joan (1980) The American Prosecutor: A Search for Identity. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
KRESS, Jack M. (1976) “Progress and Prosecution,” 423 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 99.Google Scholar
LAFAVE, Wayne R. (1970) “The Prosecutor's Discretion in the United States,” 18 American Journal of Comparative Law 532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LITTRELL, W. Boyd (1979) Bureaucratic Justice: Police, Prosecutors, and Plea Bargaining. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
MCDONALD, William F. (1979) “From Plea Negotiation to Coercive Justice: Notes on the Respecification of a Concept,” 13 Law & Society Review 385.Google Scholar
MARCH, James G., and H. A., SIMON (1958) Organizations. New York: Wiley Publishers.Google Scholar
MATHER, Lynn (1979) Plea Bargaining or Trial? Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
MATHER, Lynn (1973) “Some Determinants of the Method of Case Disposition: Decision-Making by Public Defenders in Los Angeles,” 8 Law & Society Review 187.Google Scholar
MILLER, Frank (1969) Prosecution: The Decision to Charge a Suspect with a Crime. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
MYERS, Martha, and John, HAGAN (1979) “Private and Public Trouble: Prosecutors and the Allocation of Court Resources,” 26 Social Problems 439.Google Scholar
NEUBAUER, David (1974) “After the Arrest: The Charging Decision in Prairie City,” 8 Law & Society Review 495.Google Scholar
NEWMAN, Donald J. (1966) Conviction: The Determination of Guilt or Innocence without Trial. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
PACKER, Herbert (1968) The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PETERSILIA, Joan (1985) “Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System: A Summary,” 13 Crime and Delinquency 15.Google Scholar
SCHUR, Edwin (1965) Crimes without Victims. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
SIMON, Herbert A. (1957) Administrative Behavior. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
STANKO, Elizabeth Anne (1982) “The Impact of Victim Assessment on Prosecutors's Screening Decisions: The Case of the New York County District Attorney's Office,” 16 Law & Society Review 225.Google Scholar
STANKO, Elizabeth Anne (1981) “The Arrest versus the Case,” 9 Urban 395.Google Scholar
STANKO, Elizabeth Anne (1977) “These Are the Cases That Try Themselves.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, City University of New York.Google Scholar
SUDNOW, David (1965) “Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender's Office,” 12 Social Problems 255.Google Scholar
SWIGERT, Victoria, and Ronald A., FARRELL (1976) Murder, Inequality, and the Law. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.Google Scholar
THOMPSON, James D. (1967) Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
WILLIAMS, Kristen M. (1976) “The Effects of Victim Characteristics on the Disposition of Violent Crimes,” in McDonald, W. F. (ed.), Criminal Justice and the Victim. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Howell v. Brown 85 F. Supp. 537 (D. Neb. 1949).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milliken v. Stone 7 F.2d 397 (S.D.N.Y. 1925).Google Scholar
People v. Adams 117 Cal. Rptr. 905 (1974).Google Scholar
People v. Berlin 361 N.Y.S.2d 114 (1974).Google Scholar
People v. Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway 12 Ill. App. 263 (1882).Google Scholar
Pugach v. Klein 193 F. Supp. 630 (S.D.N.Y. 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
State ex rel. Kurkierewicz v. Cannon 42 Wis. 2d 368, 378, 166 N.W.2d 255, 260 (1969).Google Scholar
Wilson v. County of Marshall 257 Ill. App. 220 (1930).Google Scholar
Wilson v. State of Oklahoma 209 P.2d 512, 514 (1949).Google Scholar

Statute Cited

D.C. Code tit. 23, § 56a (Criminal Practice Institute Trial Manual 1982).Google Scholar