Describe the role of the prosecutor or district attorney in their legal response to the gang problem

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Prosecutors/district attorneys are a part of the executive branch of government, which makes them separate from the judiciary; they are the principal regulators within the criminal justice system. They have enormous discretionary powers, and the decisions they make are basically unsupervised (Shelden et al., 2008). Whereas law enforcement may be the first line of defense against crime in society, it is the prosecutor who actually establishes the parameters for that defense. The prosecutor has no direct regulatory authority over law enforcement; however, as Katzman (1991: 124) points out, "For an investigator, a primary goal is to develop cases which will be accepted by the prosecutor for prosecution.". Thus, without support from the prosecutor, law enforcement has no means to process its product through the courts. Like law enforcement, the prosecution enjoys a substantial amount of discretion in processing criminal cases through the criminal justice system; in most instances, however, the law looks less favorably on the use of discretion employed by the police (LaFave and Israel, 1992). From an idealistic standpoint, the decision to prosecute a case is grounded in the concept of justice. In Burger v. United States, it was argued, "The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.". Realistically, the decision to prosecute a particular case is based on several factors: 1) the severity of the offense (more serious offenses are likely to be prosecuted), 2) public sentiment (political consideration), and 3) the strength of the evidence (whether the case can result in a conviction). Decisions to prosecute cases are rarely the subject of legal review (Chambliss and Seidman, 1971). The prosecutor with little animus usually carries out the prosecution of defendants; however, there have been instances of prosecutor vindictiveness brought before the higher courts (Zalman and Siegel, 1991).