TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Kessler,Daniel P.
AU  - Piehl,Anne Morrison
TI  - What Do Prosecutors Maximize?  An Analysis of Drug Offenders and Concurrent Jurisdiction
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6602
PY  - 1998
Y2  - June 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6602
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6602.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Daniel Kessler
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
434 Galvez Mall
Stanford, CA  94305
Tel: 650/723-0596
E-Mail: fkessler@stanford.edu

Anne Piehl
Department of Economics
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
E-Mail: apiehl@economics.rutgers.edu
AB  - This paper presents a model of prosecutors' decision-making processes in which prosecutors (both federal and state) internalize some of the benefits of reducing crime, but also care about developing their own human capital.  Since U.S. attorneys make their decision first, they have the opportunity to take the cases that will further their human capital development, knowing that the local district attorneys will handle the other cases. Using two surveys on prison admissions, we find that defendants who are better educated, richer, married, white, have higher-paying occupations more likely to be incarcerated in the federal system. Conversely, state prisons are more likely to incarcerate individuals who are particularly likely to be difficult prisoners, despite the supposed advantages of federal prisons in dealing with the most dangerous criminals.
ER  -