Qualitative Criminology (QC)
Abstract
"In recent years, several states in the United States have considered and implemented discovery reforms to regulate how evidence is included and shared as criminal cases play out in the court system. Currently, little research explores how prosecutors have made sense of these reforms and how discovery changes have impacted their day-to-day routines. Consequently, this case study considers how prosecutors at a large prosecutorial agency in the United States made sense of discovery reforms implemented in its state two years before data collection. Findings are based on 35 semi-structured qualitative interviews and highlight how prosecutors experienced the implementation of the reforms, their perceived organizational impacts, and their effects on their relationships with the defense. The findings indicate that prosecutorial perceptions were mixed and that experiences varied, seeing some benefits and drawbacks in the discovery changes and noting some changes in how they interacted with the defense. This research yields important implications for policymakers and future research."
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Roubanian, Gabrielle A.; Gaub, Janne E.; Koen, Marthinus C.; and Willis, James J.
(2025)
"Prosecutorial perceptions of discovery reform on a local level,"
Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 14:
No.
2, Article 2.
Available at:
https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol14/iss2/2
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