Selecting 'Career Criminals' for Priority Prosecution

• NCJ Number: 106310
• Author(s): M R Chaiken; J M Chaiken
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 82 pages
• Grant Number(s): 84-IJ-CX-0055
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Annotation

This study examined the accuracy of activities and judgments that are intended to identify and target prosecutorial resources on serious, high rate offenders at two sites: the Los Angeles Career Criminal Division, which operates under fairly rigid and restrictive selection rules; and Middlesex County, Mass., which uses more discretionary selection guidelines.

Abstract

Despite wide differences in the selection criteria and procedures, the defendants actually targeted for priority prosecution were remarkably similar across the sites. In their judgments, prosecutors considered both the offender's rate of offending and perceived dangerousness. Los Angeles attorneys were found to have consistent, justifiable grounds for selection based on State law and office policy, although the predictive accuracy of these criteria were questionable. Middlesex attorneys did not have a clear picture of criteria for selection. An examination of offender records identified 27 indicators of high-rate, dangerous offending, of which a combination of 5 was most useful in targeting this group. 14 tables and 67 references.