Missing Link: Examining Prosecutorial Decision-Making Across Federal District Courts.

摘要

U.S. Attorneys are arguably the most powerful and least studied actor in the federal criminal court workgroup. They have immense discretion to decide which cases to prosecute and what charging concession to offer in the course of plea bargaining, yet a paucity of empirical research exists on these consequential decisions. Recent scholarship on criminal sentencing suggests sentencing decisions vary significantly across court contexts, but virtually no prior work investigates jurisdictional variations in prosecutorial decision-making outcomes. The current study uses unique data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on federal criminal case processing to study these issues. It links information across multiple federal agencies in order to track individual offenders across the various stages of the federal justice system. Specifically, it combines arrest information from the U.S. Marshalls Service with charging information from the Executive and Administrative Offices of the U.S. Attorney and with sentencing information from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.