Crisis, Continuity, and Change: A Case Study of a Local Prosecutor’s Office Under COVID-19 and its Implications for Reform

Abstract Sudden crises can challenge routine work assumptions, values, and practices, and allow more fundamental organizational changes to emerge. We conducted thirty-five semi-structured interviews with local prosecutors and their staff in a jurisdiction in the United States and identified the changes they experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including how they made sense of these changes. Our findings suggest that prosecutors’ traditional conceptions of their role and purpose help explain why initial changes to increased telework and virtual court appearances, charge reductions, limits to pre-trial detention, and more lenient plea offers, did not seem to have endured post-pandemic. More generally, our study highlights some obstacles to prosecutorial reforms that try to create a less adversarial and punitive criminal legal system. Based on prosecutors’ experiences, we conclude with some policy implications that could contribute to more comprehensive changes in the future.