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The Office of Research and Evaluation (OR&E) is pleased to announce that it has completed a four-year study of prosecutorial workload in an attempt to determine if national standards can be developed. The study examined the case-related and non-case related activity of prosecutors, investigators, victim/witness advocates and support staff in 56 prosecutors’ offices across the country. (Non-case related activity includes office management, staff supervision, community outreach and law enforcement coordination.) For each office that participated in the study, OR&E staff explored the average time needed to bring different types of cases to disposition, taking into account different points of disposition (i.e., cases that were screened out, disposed prior to trial, and disposed at trial) and various complicating factors such as use of DNA evidence, child victim/witness, language barriers, and uncooperative victims/witnesses.
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Elaine Nugent, Director, Office of Research and Evaluation
 The average case processing times were then translated into workload measures, or the number of cases that a single person can handle in a year given time off for holidays, vacation, sick leave, and professional training requirements.
To determine the feasibility of national standards, the OR&E did cross-site comparisons, taking into account differences in state and local legislation, office size, office organization, factors that complicate cases and various other factors. The results indicated that different staffing configurations, trial rates and complicating factors had a tremendous impact on case processing time and thus the number of cases that a person could handle, thereby precluding the development of national standards. It is, however, possible to develop workload measures for individual states and offices.
The OR&E is publishing a monograph detailing the study findings and the process for developing individual statewide or office workload measures. The monograph should be available for purchase from APRI in late June. In addition, a summary article will appear in the July/August issue of The Prosecutor.
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Patricia Fanflik recently joined ORE as a research associate. Patricia brings with her two master’s degrees—in sociology and in human development and family studies—and has extensive experience as both a research analyst and as a group and family therapist.