Professor John Pfaff effectively documented the important insights, discussed in this article about his 2017 book Locked In, that more prosecutors filing more felony charges was an important contributor to modern mass incarceration. Against that backdrop, this new Reuters article has me wondering if fewer prosecutors filling fewer charges might further contribute now to declining incarceration. The article is headlined “Prosecutors wanted: District attorneys struggle to recruit and retain lawyers,” and here are excerpts:
District attorneys’ offices across the U.S. are struggling to recruit and retain lawyers, with some experiencing vacancies of up to 16% and a dearth of applicants for open jobs, according to interviews with more than a dozen top prosecutors and five state and national prosecutors’ associations.
The district attorneys said the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing concern about racial inequities in the criminal justice system — compounded by long-standing issues with relatively low pay and burnout — have made a career as a state prosecutor a tougher sell in the past several years.
“We’re seeing a prosecutor shortage throughout the country; it’s not limited to large jurisdictions versus small jurisdictions,” said Nelson Bunn, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, a trade group with 5,000 members….
Staffing shortages are affecting prosecutors’ decisions about whether to bring certain criminal cases to trial, according to Anthony Jordan, president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York. “We don’t get to choose the crimes that come in,” said Jordan, who is the district attorney in Washington County, New York. “But if you don’t have enough people to prosecute them then you have to let certain ones go.”
Data from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, Arizona illustrate that challenge. The number of cases the office prosecuted dropped from nearly two-thirds of felonies referred by law enforcement in 2018 to under half in 2020. And the number of vacancies in the office of 338 attorneys continues to rise — increasing nearly 53% between July 2020 and April 2022.
Recent BJS data, flagged here, indicate that the national prison population has declined nearly 25% from 2010 to 2020, although a good portion (but not all) of this prison population decline has been a consequence of COVID pandemic dynamics. Ultimately, a number of legal and extra-legal forces have been contributing to a decline in incarceration in recent years. And Pfaff’s work suggests that, if there is a sustained period of fewer prosecutors filling fewer charges nationwide, we should expect some continued declines (or at least reduced likelihood of US prison populations growing significantly in coming years).