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2019 U. Ill. L. Rev. 833 (2019)
Justice on the Line: Prosecutorial Screening before Arrest

handle is hein.journals/unilllr2019 and id is 849 raw text is: JUSTICE ON THE LINE: PROSECUTORIAL SCREENING BEFORE ARREST Adam M Gershowitz* Police make more than eleven million arrests every year. Yet prose- cutors dismiss about 25% of criminal charges with no conviction being en- tered. Needless arrests are therefore clogging the criminal justice system and harming criminal defendants. For instance, Freddie Gray was fatally injured in police custody after being arrested for possession of a switch- blade knife. Prosecutors later announced, however, that they did not believe the knife was actually illegal. If prosecutors had to approve warrantless arrests before police could take suspects into custody, Freddie Gray would still be alive. Yet prosecutors' offices almost never dictate who the police should or should not arrest. Based on interviews with forty prosecutors' offices across the country, this Article describes how police-not prosecu- tors-call the shots about who is input into the criminal justice system. This Article makes a counter-intuitive argument: we should be giving prosecutors more power so they can better protect innocent defendants. Prosecutors should be responsible for approving or rejecting all warrant- less arrests. Early prosecutorial case screening will benefit individuals by preventing unnecessary arrests, which in turn will reduce embarrassing mug shots, unnecessary bail, loss of employment due to pretrial incarcera- tion, and wrongful convictions. Avoiding unnecessary arrests will also re- duce jail overcrowding and reduce the burden on judges, clerks, prosecu- tors, public defenders, and even the police. At present, prosecutorial screening of arrests has been implemented in only a handful ofjurisdic- tions. Prosecutorial prescreening can and should be dramatically ex- panded across the country to improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system and prevent myriad harms to criminal suspects. 833 * Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law, William & Mary Law School. I am grateful to the dozens of prosecutors who provided information about their offices. Many thanks also to Jeff Bellin, Rachel Harmon, Ron Wright, and participants at the Neighborhood Criminal Justice Roundtable for helpful comments. Fred Dingledy and Elizabeth Lester provided excellent research assistance.

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