Homicide and Bargained Justice: The Agenda-Setting Effect of Crime News on Prosecutors

Abstract

This article reports the findings of research into the possibility that differences in newspaper coverage of individual criminal cases may influence the behavior of key justice-system officials with respect to those cases. The study analyzed police and court records regarding all people arrested for homicide over an 18-month period in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Newspaper coverage of those cases also was analyzed. The results suggest that the amount of space newspapers devote to a criminal case helps set the agenda of at least one class of public officials-prosecutors who must decide which criminal cases to plea-bargain, and which to take to trial. David Pritchard is Assistant Professor at the Indiana University School of Journalism, Bloomington, Indiana 47405. An earlier version of this article was presented to the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, San Diego, California, in June 1985. The author wishes to thank Professors William A. Hachten, Robert E. Drechsel, Sharon Dunwoody, and Stewart Macaulay for insightful comments on previous drafts. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 50:143-159 ? 1986 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press 0033-362X/86/0050-143/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.180 on Tue, 27 Sep 2016 05:09:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms