Primary responsibility for criminal justice in the United States falls to state and local officials.  State attorneys general in many states are using an array of approaches to address systemic criminal justice issues, such as mass incarceration, policing practices, and changes in criminal sentencing.

Shared Jurisdiction

90% of criminal prosecutions take place in state court. In all but three states where there are no District Attorneys (DE, RI, and AK); Attorneys General and District Attorneys have shared jurisdiction. While the policies differ in detail from state to state, this long-standing practice is based on sound public policy and generally operates invisibly.

These divided responsibilities are meant to be complementary. The DA's handle the vast majority of cases and the AG's take cases where there are legal conflicts (the DA or his/her staff has a personal relationship with a party, the judge, or a witness) or involve specific subject matter issues. (Medicaid Fraud, major crime in a rural area, white-collar crime, all homicides in some states, and increasingly, allegations of police brutality). This structure is designed to allow the public to have greater confidence in the final result as AG offices often have resources that allow the development of expertise in areas that rarely come before a DA.

Police Misconduct: Allegations of police misconduct are increasingly sent to AG offices for both reasons, e.g. conflicts (the DA's work daily with local police and local police are always witnesses on other pending cases) and specialty (AG can develop expertise in handling police cases). From the perspective of public confidence, it is often best to have the prosecutor be from outside any local district.

While there are disagreements on this policy, the national trend is to expand the role of attorneys general in dealing with allegations over the use of excessive force by police officers. The issue is not new and many attorneys general have handled police misconduct cases for many years.

Reference

  • "Police Lethal Use of Force," Report and Recommendations of the Task Force to Examine Improvements to the Ohio Grand Jury System, The Supreme Court of Ohio, July 2016.

Teaching materials

For teaching materials that discuss the core jurisdiction of attorneys general on criminal matters, see the materials from week 8 of the Syllabus:

These materials include the chapter on Criminal Laws from NAAG’s State Attorneys General Powers and Responsibilities, as well as selection materials on specific cases and issues.

Resources

From the Tierney Blog

For additional resources on criminal justice reform, see the Criminal Justice Reform section of the National State Attorneys General Program (AGP) archive: