On Becoming a Prosecutor

Abstract

All formal organizations are faced with the problem of securing and retaining qualified, competent employees. For the office of the criminal prosecutor, this problem is exacerbated by the values, attitudes, and motives that define the duties and responsibilities of the job. In a study of the organizational socialization of law school interns, we observed that some of the students were assimilated quickly and completely into the role of prosecutor, while others were less socialized. We believe that the organizational structure and level of control exercised over the interns accounted for these discrepancies. These factors, in turn, delimited the level of intern involvement in the prosecutorial role. The better-integrated interns were considered to be “apprentice recruits” in their respective offices; the more poorly socialized interns were looked upon as temporary help with limited skills, or “pseudo-recruits.”