The Prosecutor's Role in the Urban Court System: The Case for Management Consciousness

Abstract

any other issue. In a nationwide opinion survey released in January, 1973, by the Gallup Poll, crime moved into top position as the most vexing concern of Americans residing in cities of 500,000 or more. Just twenty-five years ago, these same Americans, according to Gallup, found many other issues more distressing, including poor housing, traffic congestion, and high taxes. In the view of today's urban American, one of the prime causes of the crime problem is lenient courts. Gallup found that the number of city residents who blame the crime problem on lenient courts has increased by fifty percent in just eight years.' Today, almost three out of every four urban Americans believe that the courts are too lenient. No one involved in the administration of criminal justice can ignore such evidence of waning public confidence. It is possible, of course, to interpret the concern for lenient courts in more than one way. The most obvious conclusion is that the public believes that sentences are not severe enough. This interpretation, however, may be an oversimplification, and the widespread public disaffection uncovered in the polls and characterized as a concern for leniency may signify an even deeper and more pervasive dissatisfaction with the criminal courts. Perhaps what the public perceives but has not as yet articulated is a failure of the criminal court system to exhibit an awareness of the public's priorities. Too often, the criminal court system appears to be operated in an aimless, unfocused and arbitrary fashion, ingesting and disposing of its workload without any sense of direction. It is our contention that one of the primary remedies for the floundering urban criminal court systems is the development of management consciousness in the office of the public prosecutor.