How to Read Your District Attorney's Record Before You Vote

Let me tell you about the most powerful elected official you have probably never thought about. He (or she) decides who gets charged with a crime in your county, what they get charged with, whether they get a deal, and whether the case goes away. He does not make speeches about it. He does not have a cable show. And in most places, on Election Day, the average voter who gets to the bottom of a long ballot looks at his name, looks at the letter next to it, and fills in the oval.

Folks, that is a bad way to hire the person who decides who goes to prison. And the funny part is that the information you need is usually sitting right there, in public, waiting for someone to read it. Nobody reads it because nobody told them it existed. So consider this your notice. Here is how to read your prosecutor's record, step by step, with no law degree and no special access.

Why this office, and why now

A quick word on why it matters, then we get to the work.

In most states, the chief local prosecutor is an elected official serving a county or a judicial district. The title varies: district attorney, state's attorney, county attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney. The job is the same. In the American system the police investigate and arrest, but the prosecutor decides which charges to bring, which to drop, and what to offer in a plea. That is an enormous amount of power over the lives of ordinary people, victims and defendants alike. I explain where the limits on it lie in Prosecutorial Discretion Has Limits, and Blanket Non-Prosecution Crosses Them.

The Declaration of Independence says that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." Consent is not a feeling. It is an informed choice, and you cannot choose well about something you have not examined. So the first job is to examine.

One housekeeping note. This guide is about reading public records and asking questions. It is not about telling you whom to vote for, and it will not. The point is to make you a harder voter to fool, whichever way you lean.

Step 1: Find out who your prosecutor is and how the job is filled

Start with the basics.

1. Search for your county or judicial district's prosecutor's office, and note the official title, the name of the current officeholder, and the date of the next election.
2. Check on your state legislature's or secretary of state's website how the office is filled. In most states it is an election, but the term length and the timing differ, and a few states fill the position by appointment.
3. Find out whether your state has an attorney general with supervisory powers over local prosecutors. Some do, and some do not. That tells you who can step in if a local office fails.

This takes ten minutes and puts you ahead of most of the electorate.

Step 2: Read the office's published policies

Many offices post their charging and plea policies online, in the form of memos, manuals or guidelines. Others do not, and the absence tells you something too.

1. Go to the office's website and look for sections called "policies," "resources," "about us," "news" or "reports."
2. Read any memo on charging (what offenses the office will bring and under what circumstances), plea bargaining (what deals the office will offer, and whether a supervisor must approve them), diversion (which defendants may be steered into treatment or other programs instead of prosecution) and bail recommendations (what the office asks the court to do before trial).
3. Read the language carefully. Look for words like "will not," "never," "presumptively" and "except." A policy that says "generally" and "unless aggravating factors are present" leaves room for judgment. A policy that says "will not" offers none. I draw this distinction at length in the piece linked above, and it is the single most useful thing to look for.
4. Note the date on each memo, and whether it has been revised. Old memos may not reflect current practice.
5. Check whether the policy explains its reasons, and whether it points to a statute. A memo that cites the law and explains how the office will weigh cases is doing its job. A memo that announces an outcome with no reasoning is a press release.

If you cannot find any written policies, make a note. We will come back to that in Step 6.

Step 3: Read the annual report, and read it skeptically

Many prosecutors' offices publish an annual report, and some counties require one. Look for it on the office's website or the county's.

1. Check what the report counts. Offices tend to feature numbers that flatter them: cases filed, convictions obtained, community events attended. That is fine, but see what is missing.
2. Look for declinations, the number of cases referred by police that the office declined to charge, by category if available. A report that lists convictions but not declinations is showing you half the ledger.
3. Look for dismissals, plea rates, diversion numbers and trial rates. Absent those, you cannot tell what happens to the cases after they are filed.
4. Look for time to disposition, the time a case takes from filing to resolution. Long delays hurt victims and defendants both.
5. Check whether the report breaks out violent felonies, property crimes, domestic violence and drug offenses separately. A single total for "cases" hides a great deal.
6. Compare years. A report that shows only the current year and no trend is asking you to take its word.

A good report is specific and gives you numbers you can check against other sources. A weak one is mostly adjectives.

Step 4: Find the court data the office does not control

This is where the work pays off, because it does not rely on the prosecutor's own account of himself.

1. Look for your state's court administration agency. Nearly every state has an office, often called the administrative office of the courts, that publishes statistics on cases filed and how they were resolved, usually by county.
2. Find the tables on criminal case dispositions: the number of cases that ended in conviction, acquittal, dismissal, diversion or other outcomes, by offense category where available.
3. Compare the court system's counts with the prosecutor's annual report. If the office says it filed a certain number of cases and the court's own data shows something different, ask why. Differences can have innocent explanations, such as different counting rules, but they deserve a question.
4. Look at dismissal rates over time. A jump in dismissals, especially in a particular category, may reflect a change in office policy, a change in police practice or a backlog. The table cannot tell you which, but it tells you where to ask.
5. Look at diversion and alternative-program data if the court system keeps it. Diversion that works is a conservative idea, since it keeps a first-time offender out of the prison system and gets him back to work, and I have no quarrel with it when the program has real accountability. The question is whether anyone checks the results.
6. Read the section on your county's law enforcement agencies' reporting as well. For the national picture and its limits, Why the FBI's Switch to NIBRS Made National Crime Numbers Harder to Read explains why you should check whether your local agencies are in the system and consistent from year to year.

A caution: a lower number of cases or convictions is not automatically good or bad. A decline in prosecutions could mean that crime fell, that the police are arresting fewer people, or that the prosecutor is declining more cases. You are looking for patterns that need an explanation, not verdicts. For the broader point about how to read crime and justice data without being fooled, see Seven Things Crime Statistics Cannot Tell You, and Two Things They Can.

Step 5: Follow the money

Budgets tell you what an office values.

1. Find the county's budget documents, usually posted by the county commission or the board of supervisors or the finance department. Look for the prosecutor's office line.
2. Compare the budget over several years. Is it rising, flat or falling? What share goes to salaries and what share to programs?
3. Look at staffing: the number of attorneys, investigators, victim advocates and support staff. Find the authorized positions and the number actually filled. A large number of vacancies in the violent crime unit tells you something no annual report will.
4. Look for special funds or grants, from federal or state sources, that pay for particular units. They may have reporting requirements, and the reports are often public.
5. Check the victim services line. The treatment of victims is a test of an office's character, and the basics, including notifying victims about hearings and plea offers, are required by law in many states. See What to Do if You Are a Crime Victim, Your Rights Step by Step for the rights victims have.
6. Look at how the office handles cases when the county cannot afford enough lawyers. An understaffed office makes more plea deals and declines more cases, and it is an issue to raise at a budget hearing, not only at the ballot box.

If you want to know what a prosecutor is prioritizing, look at where the money goes. A press release can say anything. A budget line is a commitment.

Step 6: File a public records request

What if the information is not posted? Your state almost certainly has a public records law, and you can use it. The name varies: open records act, sunshine law, freedom of information act, public records act. The basic idea is the same: government records belong to the public, with some exceptions.

1. Find your state's public records statute through the legislature's or attorney general's website. Most states publish a guide to making a request.
2. Write a short, specific request. Ask for documents, not opinions: "Written charging policies, plea policies, and diversion policies in effect since January 1 of the past four years." Specific requests get faster answers than vague ones.
3. Send it to the office's designated records custodian, if there is one, in writing, and keep a copy.
4. Note the response deadline your state sets, and note any fee the office may charge for copying.
5. Be polite. A courteous request is more likely to be answered, and nothing in this process requires hostility.
6. Understand the exceptions. Records about open investigations, privileged legal advice and certain personal information are usually protected. You are not asking for a file on an individual case. You are asking about the office's policies and its aggregate numbers.
7. If the office denies the request, the denial should state a reason, and your state's law will describe how to appeal. I am not giving you legal advice about your particular situation, and if the matter becomes complicated you should look at your state's own guidance or ask a lawyer.

The point of the exercise is simple. A prosecutor who has written policies should be happy to share them. A prosecutor who has no written policies should be asked why.

Step 7: Check the record beyond the office itself

A few more places add context.

1. Appellate opinions. Search your state court system's website for appeals involving your county's prosecutor's office. Opinions that criticize the office's conduct are public.
2. The state bar's public discipline records. If a prosecutor has been disciplined for misconduct, that record is usually searchable.
3. Local news archives. Skim coverage of major cases and how the office handled them, though keep in mind that coverage depends on what reporters chose to cover. I would not rely on any one outlet, and the how and why of that framing is a topic for the media watch page.
4. Police and sheriff's statements. Do local law enforcement leaders say they can work with the office? Cooperation between investigators and prosecutors shows up in how cases are prepared.
5. Victim advocates and defense lawyers. Both groups see the office from the inside and sometimes disagree sharply. If a victims' group and a defense bar both complain about the same thing, listen.

Step 8: Ask the right questions at a candidate forum

If a candidate forum or town hall happens, here are questions that cannot be answered with a slogan.

1. "Does your office have written charging and plea policies? Will you publish them?"
2. "Are there any categories of offenses your office will not prosecute? If so, which, and why?"
3. "What share of felony cases referred by police did your office decline last year, and how does that compare with the year before?"
4. "How do you decide when to offer diversion, and who checks that diversion works?"
5. "How does your office notify victims about hearings and plea offers, and what happens when it fails to?"
6. "What do you recommend for pretrial release in a case involving violence, and what is your policy on bail recommendations?"
7. "How many attorneys do you have, how many positions are vacant, and what would you change about staffing?"
8. "What is your policy on cooperating with federal prosecutors on gang and firearm cases?"
9. "How would you measure your own success after four years?"

Listen to the form of the answers, not only the content. A candidate who gives you a number and a plan is respecting you. A candidate who gives you a paragraph about values is dodging.

What this will and will not tell you

Reading the record will not hand you a verdict. It will tell you what the office says it does, what the courts say the office did, where the money goes and how open the office is. Those are four independent checks, and when they agree you can trust what you see. When they diverge, you have found the question to ask.

There is a point here about citizenship that goes beyond one office. The Founders built a system in which power is divided and officials answer to the public, but the public has to do its part. A republic is not a machine that runs itself. It runs on ordinary people reading boring documents. Do that once, for one office, and you will find it is less work than choosing a new phone, and a good deal more important. If you want a place to start on the rest of your local ballot, the representatives page lists the officials who represent you, and a related guide on pushing your city council toward real public safety funding is in How to Get Your City Council to Fund Police Hiring Instead of Slogans.

The case in brief

1. The local prosecutor decides who is charged, with what, and on what terms, and in most states he is elected, so voters have a real say.
2. The office's own policies, annual reports and budgets show its stated priorities, and words like "will not" are the signal to look for.
3. Independent court data, state court administration statistics and appellate opinions let you check what the office says against what the courts recorded.
4. A public records request, written specifically and politely, can obtain policies and aggregate numbers that are not posted.
5. Questions at a candidate forum should ask for numbers, written policies and a plan, not slogans.

What you can do: this week, find your county prosecutor's website, download any written charging or plea policy, and note the date of the next primary and general election.