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Interesting new paper examining prosecutorial biases

By Douglas A. Berman

I just noticed this interesting-looking new paper on SSRN by Barbara O'Brien, which is titled "A Recipe for Bias: An Empirical Look at the Interplay between Institutional Incentives and Bounded Rationality in Prosecutorial Decision Making."  Here is the abstract: Prosecutors wield tremendous power, which is kept in check by a set of unique ethical obligations. In explaining why prosecutors sometimes fail to honor these multiple and arguably divergent obligations, scholars tend to fall into two schools of thought.  The first school focuses upon institutional incentives that promote abuses of power. These scholars implicitly treat the prosecutor as a rational actor who decides whether to comply with a rule based on an assessment of the expected costs and benefits of doing so...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 25, 2009 (boomark / email).