How many local prosecutors are there in the United States? How many of them are full-time or part-time? Do you know what they are called in the other 49 states?
How do the staff sizes, budgets and caseloads of prosecutors' offices in jurisdictions in your population category compare with your office?
How does your jurisdiction compare to others concerning the:
- number of felonies, misdemeanors and other kinds of cases handled annually;
- criminal cases closed by convictions;
- juvenile cases and dispositions;
- use of DNA evidence, community prosecution, work-related threats received by the chief prosecutor and/or staff members; and
- participation in integrated computer systems?
How valuable would this information be to you or to your state association? The answer is obvious. Such information can be used not only in evaluating your own office, but also as a statistical tool in making budget proposals and explaining the prosecutorial function in a variety of government and public forums.
All of this information, and more, is available to you through a periodic report called Prosecutors in State Courts, published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) a program of the U.S. Department of Justice. The current project marks the fifth time that BJS has conducted its National Survey of Prosecutors, which collects information on resources, policies and practices of the nation's prosecutors.
Results from the 2001 survey will be compiled in a report that will be available in hard copy and from the BJS Web site at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs later this year. Right now BJS needs your help.
The National Opinion Research Center, based in Chicago, is conducting the national survey for BJS. If your office handles felonies, you should have received a questionnaire by mail or fax. If you have not, or if you have any questions, call the National Opinion Research Center at (800) 577-1486. For your information, a six-page survey has gone to a sampling of 300 chief prosecutors in the largest jurisdictions. The approximately 2,100 chief prosecutors in middle-sized or smaller jurisdictions have received a three-page questionnaire. The first three pages of both questionnaires are identical. The longer questionnaires contain questions that would be applicable only to larger jurisdictions.
We all receive such a large and growing volume of communications by mail, fax and e-mail, that sometimes, because of the many daily pressures of our jobs, we tend to put aside or ignore questionnaires.
This is one questionnaire you should not ignore. The quality and value of the National Survey of Prosecutors and the resulting report will depend on the cooperation and responses of prosecutors like you. If you have not filled out your questionnaire and returned it, I urge you to do so now. Completing the survey will benefit you and prosecutors nationwide.
