Consolidation of Prosecutor Offices

29 Pages Posted: 23 Feb 2016

See all articles by Bryan C. McCannon

Bryan C. McCannon

Illinois Wesleyan University

Claudio Detotto

Università di Corsica (Laboratoire LISA - UMR 6240 CNRS); CRENoS (Centre for North South Economic Research)

Date Written: January 28, 2016

Abstract

We investigate the impact of the consolidation of local agencies publicly-providing services, focusing on the prosecution of crime. In many states in the U.S. prosecution is a county office with a chief prosecutor directing decisions. Other states merge counties into prosecutorial districts. We show that, along with the cost savings that arises, the evidence suggests that prosecutorial services benefit from increasing returns to scale. The efficiency of prosecutorial output improves in consolidated districts. Further, we show that it is not due to differing outcomes of the criminal justice system, but in fewer inputs used.

Keywords: crime, Data Envelopment Analysis, district attorney, efficiency, jurisdiction, Propensity Score Matching, prosecution

JEL Classification: K42, H11, C60, D61

Suggested Citation

McCannon, Bryan C. and Detotto, Claudio, Consolidation of Prosecutor Offices (January 28, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2735760 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2735760

Bryan C. McCannon (Contact Author)

Illinois Wesleyan University ( email )

P.O. Box 2900
Bloomington, IL 61702-2900
United States

HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/site/bryancmccannon

Claudio Detotto

Università di Corsica (Laboratoire LISA - UMR 6240 CNRS) ( email )

Jean Nicoli BP 52
Corte, Corsica 20250
France

HOME PAGE: http://umrlisa.univ-corse.fr/

CRENoS (Centre for North South Economic Research) ( email )

Via Muroni, 25
Sassari, 07100
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://crenos.unica.it/crenos/

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