Crime, Prosecutors, and the Certainty of Conviction This paper tests predictions of a structural, augmented supply-of-offenders model regarding the relative effects of police, public prosecution and courts, respectively, on crime. Using detailed data on the different stages of the criminal prosecution process in Germany, empirical evidence suggests that public prosecutors and their influence on...

As prosecutors have increasingly invoked asset forfeiture laws in their war against crime, scholars have harshly criticized the use of forfeiture laws to seize attorneys' fees. In cases in which attorneys' fees are seized, prosecutors claim that defendants are paying their lawyers with the proceeds of criminal activity. For example, drug dealers might use the profits from cocaine or heroin sale...

This paper analyzes state and local law enforcement agents’ perceptions about prosecutors’ knowledge of digital evidence and their willingness to prosecute cases involving digital evidence, and agents’ perceptions about judges’ knowledge of digital evidence and their willingness to admit digital evidence in legal proceedings. Statistical analysis indicates that a significant negative correlatio...

The need to cultivate political support for nominations to higher office creates a conflict of interest for U.S. attorneys and the prosecutors they supervise in cases involving the two major parties. We find evidence of partisan differences in the timing of public corruption case filings around elections. Relative to the president’s co-partisans, opposition party defendants are more likely to b...