Census of Prosecutor Offices

The Urban Institute proposes to manage the Census of Prosecutor Offices (CPO) with the goal of collecting key information about prosecutor offices across the country around their operations and caseloads. Since successfully conducting the last full census of prosecutor offices for BJS in 2007 and achieving a robust response rate, we have conducted several BJS censuses and large surveys of prosecutors and have established expertise in both census methodology and topical knowledge of prosecutor operations. We will take lessons we learned from censuses we managed and our repeated engagement of prosecutors in large surveys to develop a questionnaire and census administration plan that will garner responses from offices of a variety of sizes. We also have developed crucial partnerships with the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA), Institute for Innovation in Prosecution (IIP), and Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP) to assist with recruiting respondents. These partnerships have been carefully chosen based on their connections with harder to reach sites, including rural and small prosecution offices. Urban Institute researchers will not only be accompanied by their partners at APA, IIP, and FJP, but they will also develop an expert panel comprised of researchers, professional prosecutor association leaders, and prosecutors across the country, particularly in smaller and rural offices. The panel will assist on questionnaire development and census administration strategies.