Reform-minded elected prosecutors cannot guarantee their directives reach actual charging decisions

Evidence

Although the executive teams can produce new memos, whether or how to charge or whom to divert, it is line prosecutors who have to carry these directives through. Some have called this phenomenon a standard principal-agent problem (Eisenhardt, 1989), suggesting that managers cannot handle every case and that “there is significant potential for noncompliance from those on the lower rungs of the hierarchy due to a lack of buy-in to the goals of the head prosecutor” (Coma, 2018, p. 96). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 599

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 599