Date of Award
5-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Primary Advisor
Neal Coates
Secondary Advisor
Chris Riley
Abstract
In the criminal justice system, prosecutors (also known as District Attorneys) are granted discretion. Discretion gives prosecutors the ability to choose which cases to pursue, what plea deals to offer, and the suggested sentence for the crime. However, in the real world, prosecutors do not have as much power as many believe they do. While they do work in an important role, the media, T.V, movies, and even social media platforms have created a general misconception. In researching prosecutorial discretion, an attempt will be made to disprove any misconceptions and seek to educate society. The purpose of this study is to find what sentencing philosophies are being used in the field. In doing so, an attempt will be made to find a correlation between the sentencing philosophies at play and criminal justice statistics.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Briones, Bryan, "A Survey of Prosecutorial Philosophies and their Effects on Sentencing" (2022). Honors College. 68.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/honors/68