Interviews with California Prosecutors Lead to Better Understanding of Diversity in Criminal Justice Front Line

“In California, Latinos comprise almost 39% of the population, but 9% of the prosecutors.” – Graphic by Margaret Hagan, Stanford University

The Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC) recently released a new report, Diversity in Prosecutors’ Offices: Views from the Front Line, the culmination of a policy practicum on prosecutor diversity taught by David Sklansky, Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and SCJC Faculty Co-Director, and Debbie Mukamal, Lecturer in Law and SCJC Executive Director. The report, written by students in the practicum, is a follow-up to SCJC’s 2015 study of the racial and gender demographics of prosecutors’ offices across California, which described, for the first time, the makeup of these critical criminal justice offices.

In this new study, the SCJC team dug deeper into the makeup of prosecutors’ offices—interviewing prosecutors in five California counties “in an attempt to better understand the importance of diversity in the workplace, the evolution of the demographics of prosecutors’ offices, the challenges prosecutors face in creating and maintaining a diverse workforce, and the most promising strategies in overcoming those challenges.” In the interview with Sklansky and Mukamal that follows, we learn more about this important new research.

What were your goals in undertaking this research? Why do you think it is important?

Sklansky: We knew from a report SCJC produced last year that the demographics of California prosecutors don’t match the demographics of California. In particular, Latinos are heavily underrepresented in district attorneys’ offices, and whites are overrepresented. And we knew that women tended to be concentrated in entry-level positions and underrepresented at supervisory levels. We wanted to get a sense of what prosecutors themselves think about this situation: whether they think diversity matters, what difference they think it makes, what they think stands in the way of diversity, and how they think their offices might get around some of those obstacles.

The prosecutors we talked with told us that diversity does matter. They said that having minority prosecutors makes an office more responsive to the communities they serve, more sensitive to issues of racial and cultural bias, and more effective at securing the trust and cooperation of community members. That was consistent, by the way, with what research has shown about the benefits of diversity in police forces.

Mukamal: We also wanted to better understand how demographics have changed over time in district attorneys’ offices. While the quantitative study we did first gave us a snapshot, it didn’t account for how diversity may have shifted in the last several decades, and what efforts, in particular, contributed to those changes. The conversations with the attorneys from the five offices filled in those holes.

Professor David Sklansky Endorses Federal Prison Sentencing Reform
David Sklansky, Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and SCJC Faculty Co-Director

Your report notes that prosecutors themselves recognize that although their offices have become more diverse over the past 10-15 years, there is still a long way to go. Can you talk about some of the challenges offices face when it comes to recruiting and hiring minority candidates?

Mukamal: A number of obstacles exist, including a not very diverse pipeline to the offices from our law schools. We need to graduate a more diverse group of lawyers. Also, there is a need to overcome the distrust some groups have of law enforcement generally and prosecutors specifically. Those relationships – in some places – will take significant efforts to heal.

Sklansky: The pipeline issue is huge. On a percentage basis, California prosecutors are more diverse than the state bar, and they look more like the population of California. That said, the prosecutors we talked to thought there was a lot they could do, and in some cases were already doing, to make their offices more diverse.

So it can be a catch-22? Some respondents said that recruiting for a more diverse office was challenging precisely because their offices had a bad reputation in minority neighborhoods. Can you talk about that and how prosecutors’ offices might address that?

Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC) - Debbie Mukamal, Executive Director
Debbie Mukamal, Lecturer in Law and SCJC Executive Director

Mukamal: While we heard that there can be distrust between some minority groups and prosecutors’ offices, more of what we heard is that the lack of diversity makes it harder to recruit diverse staff. Some younger prosecutors told us that office diversity was an important consideration for them in deciding where to apply and which offers to accept.

Sklansky: So, yes, that means that offices that aren’t diverse can find it hard to dig themselves out of that hole. On the other hand, we know it can be done, because some offices have done it. One thing that appears really important is leadership on this issue from the elected District Attorney. On this issue as on others, the head of the office sets the tone. Many prosecutors told us that the attitude of the elected District Attorney is critical in making a prosecutors’ office more welcoming to minorities, and also to women.

You’ve published two reports on the topic of diversity in prosecutors’ offices—first a quantitative analysis and now a qualitative analysis. Are there plans for a third report?

Sklansky: We don’t have plans at the moment for another report on prosecutorial diversity, but we definitely will be doing more work on prosecutors’ offices and how to improve them. During spring quarter we will be working with a group of students to figure out the best ways for prosecutors to handle the investigation of officer-involved shootings; that’s research we’re carrying out at the request of the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office. And down the road we hope to find ways to assess the overall performance of prosecutors’ offices—measures that we hope will be helpful both to voters and to prosecutors themselves.

Mukamal: This research has helped us focus our attention and efforts on the front end of the criminal justice system. Prosecutors wield tremendous power, and better understanding how their offices function is essential to a full analysis of the criminal justice system. Also, we are heartened that others are now considering replicating our diversity analysis in other parts of the country. We believe additional attention to the lack of diversity within district attorneys’ offices will lead to strategic initiatives that bear fruit, just as they have in law enforcement agencies.