Individual and Organizational Factors in Prosecutorial Decision-Making

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Over the past decade, scholars have turned their attention to examining the dynamics of decisionmaking in the criminal justice system. Much of this work has focused on the courts and important decisions surrounding sentencing and parole. Of equal importance are the decisions made by prosecuting attorneys in confronting whether to issue warrants, file charges, or plea bargain a case. While studies exist on prosecutors' behavior, research to date has typically concentrated either on individual decisonmaking or on the organizational context of the court. Attempts to merge the two have not been very successful due in part to a lack of consideration of appropriate organizational and cognitive models. Dr. Rauma seeks to integrate individual and organizational perspectives by investigating prosecutors' use of schemas, or cognitive models, in their processing of criminal cases. It is hypothesized that these schemas are derived primarily from the organizational context in which prosecutors work. The basic design calls for a two-step data collection: Phase one consists of in-depth interviews, systematic observation, and archival data drawn from approximately 1500 case files. The Phase two data collection is based on a computer-assisted interview of prosecutors who will respond to case vignettes on a sample of real cases. The computer will record the variables that prosecutors select to make decisions, the order in which the variables are selected, and the time to do so, permitting analysis of sequential decisionmaking. This research promises to advance our understanding of the influence of organizational factors on individual level decisionmaking in the criminal justice system. The vignette analysis in particular tests for schema use with more complex situations and more formal procedures than in previous studies. Also, the use of vignettes for the study of sequential decisionmaking and information search is a new approach that may be useful for other settings.