Some Things Are Just Better Left as Secrets: Non-Transparency and Prosecutorial Decision Making in the Era of Neoliberal Punitivism

Authors

Shanda Angioli, San Diego State University
Paul Kaplan, San Diego State University

Abstract

"This paper focuses on prosecutorial decision-making during the late-20th and early 21st century era of punitive American criminal justice. Qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 former prosecutors who worked in two large and diverse states to determine how they made their decisions regarding charging and plea bargaining. This study investigates how prosecutors consider legal and extra-legal factors when making decisions. The results suggest that prosecutors considered legal factors such as evidence/provability and elements of the crime, the defendant’s criminal history, and witness credibility and/or victim credibility, but also extra-legal factors such as, victim’s request, law enforcement priorities, relations with defense counsel, high profile cases, and community influence. All of these decisions were made during and reflect the punitive era of criminal justice in the USA."

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Angioli, Shanda and Kaplan, Paul (2017) "Some Things Are Just Better Left as Secrets: Non-Transparency and Prosecutorial Decision Making in the Era of Neoliberal Punitivism," Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 5: No. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol5/iss1/4