Abstract

This article contributes to our understanding of the role of gender in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. We use administrative data from a prosecutor’s office in a large urban county to estimate the direct and interactive effects of defendant and prosecutor gender on accepting initial charges brought by law enforcement officials. After implementing coarsened exact matching, Probit regression results suggest that prosecutors, on average, are more likely to accept charges against male defendants. In scenarios where gender is salient to decision making (i.e., in domestic violence and sexual assault cases), we find mixed evidence regarding whether female prosecutors make decisions differently than male prosecutors, as predicted by the theory of representative bureaucracy. Finally, we find that female prosecutors with higher levels of prosecutorial experience are more likely to accept domestic violence and sexual assault charges against male defendants than both their male counterparts and female prosecutors with limited experience. Our results suggest that female prosecutors reserve their discretion for complex scenarios where organizational routines are less set in stone. Furthermore, female prosecutors with more experience may be more able to identify these scenarios, and are thus more likely to actively represent.

中文翻译：

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性别与检察裁量权：一项实证评估

摘要

本文有助于我们理解性别在行使起诉自由裁量权中的作用。我们使用来自大城市县检察官办公室的行政数据来估计被告和检察官性别对接受执法人员提出的初步指控的直接和互动影响。在实施了粗略的精确匹配之后，Probit回归结果表明，检察官平均而言更可能接受针对男性被告的指控。在性别对决策至关重要的情况下（例如，在家庭暴力和性侵犯案件中），我们发现混合证据表明，女代表检察官的决定是否与男代表检察官的决定不同，正如代表官僚制理论所预测的那样。最后，我们发现，具有较高检察经验的女性检察官比男性检察官和经验有限的女性检察官更可能接受针对男性被告的家庭暴力和性侵犯指控。我们的结果表明，女性检察官保留其酌情决定权，以应对组织常规不太固定的复杂情况。此外，具有更多经验的女检察官可能更有能力确定这些情况，因此更有可能主动提出意见。我们的结果表明，女性检察官保留其酌情决定权，以应对组织常规不太固定的复杂情况。此外，具有更多经验的女检察官可能更有能力确定这些情况，因此更有可能主动提出意见。我们的结果表明，女性检察官保留其酌情决定权，以应对组织常规不太固定的复杂情况。此外，具有更多经验的女检察官可能更有能力确定这些情况，因此更有可能主动提出意见。