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How do prosecutors behave when the state puts them in charge of solving social problems? Drawing on interviews with prosecutors in California, this article investigates the degree to which problem-oriented strategies can transform the conventional prosecutorial role. The data show that problem-oriented prosecutors regard themselves as more responsive to the communities they serve and more inclined to develop creative and broad-ranging strategies to manage deviance within these communities. But there are significant limitations to the social worker role embedded in the problem orientation. First, problem-solving approaches are most compatible with chronic, low-level criminal offenses that hold little professional allure for prosecutors, who therefore have little incentive (at least in traditional professional terms) to devote time and energy to solving them. Second, the problem-oriented model produces among prosecutors a challenging role conflict, as the skills required for effective, creative problem-solving contrast sharply with those traits that traditionally define a good prosecutor. If problem-solving strategies are to effectively take hold, therefore, the prosecutorial role must be reconceptualized and the institution of prosecution reconstituted to accommodate a wider range of attitudes and actions.

This chapter demonstrates the value of ethnographic research to the study of the relationship between legal narrative and professional identity. It focuses on the ethical and professional judgements embedded in American federal prosecutors' creation and critiques of opening and closing statements. Drawing on ethnographic research, I argue that these statements revolve around the concept of ‘justice’, which prosecutors articulate, affirm and contest through the narratives of honesty and impartiality. More broadly, these conceptions of justice inform how federal prosecutors understand their identities and roles as professional legal actors. Ethnography's unique value lies in furnishing data pertaining to how trial narratives are fashioned and refined through ‘workshopping’ before these narratives are shared with jurors. The chapter thus highlights processes of narrative reflexivity and story composition.

Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors and, in particular, prosecutors, use the legal tools associated with overcriminalization is scarce. In this chapter, we describe three forms of overcriminalization that, in theory, have created new tools for prosecutors: the criminalization of new behaviors, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, and the internal expansion of criminal laws. We then use a unique dataset of felony filings and dispositions in Florida from 1995 to 2015 to test a series of hypotheses examining how overcriminalization influences prosecutorial practices given three changes to the political economy during this time: the decline in violent and property crime, the Great Recession, and a growing call for criminal justice reform. We find that prosecutors have been unconstrained by declining crime rates. Yet, rather than rely on new criminal statutes or mandatory minimum sentence laws, they maintained their caseloads by increasing their filing rates for traditional violent, property and drug offenses. At the same time, the data demonstrate nonviolent other offenses are the top charge in almost 20% of the felony caseload between 2005 and 2015. Our findings also suggest that, despite reform rhetoric, filing and conviction rates decreased due to the Recession, not changes in the law. We discuss the implications of these findings for criminal justice reform.

Recent trends against capital punishment raise the question of whether or when the U.S. is going to abolish the death penalty. One way of investigating this possibility is to study the work of capital prosecutors. In this chapter I analyze California capital prosecutors through a close reading of trial transcripts and interviews. The results show that prosecutor discourses evince a paradox – while instantiating powerful ideological themes that may underlie state killing, prosecutors also assert the primacy of ‘facts’ and ‘law.’ While this tension does not represent a strict measure of capital punishment's lifespan, its presence suggests that these types of tensions are not enough to change the law, thereby hinting that while the death penalty may be weakened in the United States, it is not close to dying.

Purpose – To assess how well varied policy initiatives address rape survivors’ difficulties participating in criminal prosecution.

Method – The evaluation takes a victim-centered perspective, rejecting the assumption that retraumatization is a necessary or inevitable by-product of prosecution. It accepts decision-making powers granted to law enforcement and prosecution practitioners to “found,” charge, prosecute, and plead cases, but questions the means adopted to achieve immediate goals. The evaluation considers legislative, procedural, and extra-criminal proposals such as restorative justice (RJ) conferencing and prosecutorial behavior modification. The evaluation draws on empirical investigations of case attrition, law enforcement, and prosecutorial decision-making, interorganizational collaboration in case processing, RJ, and survivors’ experiences with criminal prosecution.

Findings – Many of rape survivors’ difficulties with criminal prosecution stem from legal actors’ lack of knowledge about survivors’ purposes for participation and strategies to maintain ownership of a conflict that has been appropriated by prosecution, the conflicts survivors’ preexisting social relations pose, how lack of information about and experience with courtroom roles and norms produces anxiety and defensive behavioral strategies, and how survivors interpret and experience inconsistent messages about their role in and power over prosecution. The criminal justice process can directly reduce the causes of retraumatization and achieve procedural justice in ways that have positive implications for better substantive outcomes.

Practical implications – Instituting practices accommodating users’ behavioral orientations should increase the perception that reporting and prosecuting are viable options. Following Taslitz (1999), improving the effectiveness of rape survivors’ communication will increase gender equity generally.

Drawing upon a case study with public prosecutors, this article seeks to illustrate a reflective methodology for the analysis of activities.

The paper first describes the origin of the intervention at the National School of Magistracy and the great diversity of public prosecutor daily activities, and then presents the theoretical and methodological framework employed: the “clinic of activity” and its associated analyses in “crossed self‐confrontation”. This perspective organizes a developmental process in the professional experience of professionals by the way of the analysis methodology, constructed in a Vygotskian interpretation of the thought‐language relations and its consequences for consciousness and psychological development. Finally, the paper illustrates the approach using the example of a micro‐event, a lapsus lingae that occurred during work activity, and shows how such an apparently insignificant “detail” can become a subject of reflection and enable an individual and collective elaboration of thinking about work.

By examining this singular event and the progression of its interpretation, the paper attempts to explain the approach and field of operation in the clinic of activity. This example shows how an apparently insignificant event can lead to an analysis of the work activity. In this example, an error in pronunciation, interpreted by the professionals as a lapsus linguae, is the basis of an analysis which makes it possible to show and develop the principle of the counter argument, the obligations that this principle carries, as well as the historical and generic forms of the counter argument within hearings.

This paper looks to transform preoccupied professionals into occupied professionals, or in other words, to expand the profession's limits.

Interviewing victims of child sex abuse requires considerable care in order to minimise error. Due to children’s heightened suggestibility any question asked of a child could potentially incite error that could undermine the witness’s credibility. A focus group was conducted in order to facilitate the development of guidance for interviewers around the circumstances in which it is necessary to ask children follow-up questions in an interview. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Seven Crown prosecutors representing every Australian state and territory (with the exception of one small state) were issued with 25 hypothetical narrative accounts of child abuse and asked to indicate what information, if any, required follow-up in the child’s narrative. Their responses and rationale for requiring following up in some cases and not others were discussed.

Thematic analysis revealed three recommendations to guide questioning: whether the case involved identification or recognition evidence; the presence of contextual features that may influence the witness’s memory, or that should trigger a particular line of questioning; and whether the information can or should be sought at a later stage by the trial prosecutor, rather than by the interviewer.

The recommendations are discussed within the context of their implications for interviewing, that is, how each recommendation could be implemented in practice.

The present study extends prior literature by elucidating principles to guide decision making across interview topic areas. The need for such guidance is highlighted by research suggesting that topics such as offender identity, offence time and place, and witnesses are a source of overzealous questioning in interviews.

This paper aims to explore the effect of corruption in the Eastern European legal system as it implicates German-speaking jurisdictions in cases of international cooperation, especially pertaining to white-collar crimes and mutual legal assistance. This field report considers how during the course of the career of a prosecutor, corruption comes into play and creates a culture which prevents the execution of justice in the native country and in collaboration with the European Union. The invocation of compulsory measures in criminal case proceedings is examined carefully.

The first author is an internationally active lawyer and provides an insight referring to the personal experience of Eastern European prosecutors and the wider impression he has gained of the system in which they operate. This is enforced by his teaching at the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna, where he trains public prosecutors from Eastern Europe and through this collaboration, learns of their experience in the system. The impressions gained from real life are supported by an extensive understanding of the literature, often showing that a key problem is the lack of open discussion on the matter.

German-speaking countries cannot make international proceedings dependent on the findings from Eastern European prosecutor offices. Although there are highly qualified prosecutors at work, there is a systemic corruption evident which threatens the reliability of investigative results. Corruption is evident from the inception of a prosecutor’s career to the most senior positions, showing that bribes account for an adverse selection of prosecutors.

This is a report based on first-hand sources. It elucidates the existing literature with testimony of the current culture and its tangible influence. The implications for international proceedings are paralleled with the history of possible corruption in a prosecutor’s career, the juxtaposition of which depicts a striking reality. Above all, the cyclical nature of corruption in the legal system is highlighted.

The purpose of this study was to fill the gap in understanding the impact of Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) evidence and testimony in driving under the influence (DUI) trials. This was accomplished by documenting and analyzing the perceptions of DREs and the DRE program across different stakeholders to understand how and when this type of evidence is used in DUI trials.

The methodology is a qualitative case study of the DRE program in one police agency in Washington. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with criminal justice actors and state-level experts on their perceptions of the DRE program for the agency. Themes were developed from these interviews to analyze their perceptions of the efficacy and utility of DREs in trials.

While the courts in Washington accept DRE evidence in criminal trials, DRE evidence is largely absent in the adjudication process. Participants noted multiple reasons for this, including the lack of trials, the primacy of blood evidence and the expansion of the Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement (ARIDE) program.

Although the DRE program has been around for decades, there is a lack of peer-reviewed studies regarding DRE evidence, and no studies regarding how court actors perceive and use DRE evidence. Understanding when and how DRE evidence is utilized in DUI trials can increase its value and utility by prosecutors and the national DRE program.

Prosecutors are politically elected officials entrusted with the sensitive responsibilities of prosecuting law violators. The strength and admissibility of evidence is tantamount to a successful prosecution, not politics, personal views, or other outside influences. And, the Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors must ensure justice is achieved for crime victims and criminal defendants alike. However, outside influences, personal views, and other factors may influence a prosecutor’s leadership and decision making in some criminal cases. Since the office of prosecution is an elected position, their success is based on convictions whether achieved through plea bargaining or a guilty verdict at trial. This chapter examines criminal cases in which prosecutorial leadership strategies and decisions have circumvented justice in the name of politics or political correctness. The lack of evidence or withholding of evidence in these cases suggests that some prosecutors are more interested in personal or political interests rather than justice.