The Missing Link: Examining Prosecutorial Decision Making Across Federal District Courts

This grant is funded under NIJ's Data Resources Program, which supports secondary analysis using National Archive of Criminal Justice Data; the FY2010 solicitation prioritized research on sentencing and other Federal criminal case processing. This project examines inter-district variation in and predictors of prosecutorial decisionmaking in Federal court cases, and differences in dismissals, charging, and sentence outcomes. Analyses will be based on felony case data compiled by linking U.S. Marshals Service arrest data, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts charging data, and U.S. Sentencing Commission sentencing data; this will be supplemented by district-level and community indicators such as U.S. Census and Uniform Crime Reports data. (Note death penalty cases are excluded.) Work products include reports and data with documentation that will further adjudication research, policy and practice.

ca/ncf