Evaluating U.S. judicial district prosecutor performance using DEA: are disadvantaged counties more inefficient?

摘要

In this paper, we evaluate the efficiency of prosecutor office efficiency in the United States. Using multiple inputs and multiple outputs to characterize prosecutor office production, technical and scale efficiency are calculated for U.S. counties. Given the complex nature of service provision and potential heterogeneity based on judicial district size, we restrict our sample to those counties with populations between 100 and 500 thousand. Given the efficiency results, we also test whether efficiency is statistically related to median income and the percentage of minority population. The results suggest that prosecutor offices in more socio-economically disadvantages counties are more inefficient.