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Bates College Journal of Political Studies

Bates College Journal of Political Studies

Abstract

The U.S. prison system is plagued by an overrepresentation of the country’s residents, at twenty percent of the world’s prison population. The discretion of prosecutors to determine when and which charges to file has been linked to the immense prison growth of the U.S. since the late 1970s, especially given their lack of judicial and public oversight. In this study, participants were asked to answer survey questions made up of four scales: knowledge of the prosecutorial role (Prosecutor Knowledge), support for policy curtailing prosecutorial discretion (Policy Support), Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). Findings included significant results for RWA on Prosecutor Knowledge and both RWA and SDO on Policy Support. Though the internal reliability of the Prosecutor Knowledge scale was low, these results may indicate that the understanding of the American public is generally limited in regard to the role of prosecutors in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, this may support RWA’s relevance in traditionally power-holding roles and structures, especially as it relates to public understanding, knowledge, and policy support regarding an assortment of political issues. Future research may find exploring the applications of these findings in other issues an interesting venue and practitioners, such as activists, may find the assumption of egalitarian values to be unhelpful in pursuing policy that promotes such values.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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