John Pfaff was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article about prosecutorial decisions and their impact on policing, court dockets, and prison populations.
Prosecutors are “probably the most powerful actors in the system, but we have no idea what they do and why they do it because we have no data,” said John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham University School of Law who has studied how prosecutors’ charging decisions affect the prison population.
Mr. Pfaff relied on data from courts, he said, because there was a “blind spot” in material from prosecutors.
While Mr. Pfaff disputed that prosecutors needed help “seizing the narrative,” as Mr. Vance suggested, he said that if the institute produced data, it could inform policy and improve the justice system.
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