Chance of being convicted is very weakly correlated with actual guilt, or even procecutor knowledge of guilt. Consider the case of an illegal search that definitively proves guilt, but cannot be presented at trial. The prosecution would probably want to proceed with their 10% case, since they know the defendent is guilty, even though the jury won’t have key information.
Also, too, predicting outcomes is a skill separate from ability to generate outcomes. The Tails Come Apart, Goodheart, and all that..
Also, also, too almost no prosecutors are directly elected, judging people by any raw metric is wierd and not done—there would be some arbitrary cutoffs added to translate it to a quantified grading scale, and, as other commenters said, the root cause here is way deeper than “the DA charges 17 counts of assault, one for each blow, plus 3 Kidnapping, one for each grab, etc. Etc. Etc.
Consider the case of an illegal search that definitively proves guilt, but cannot be presented at trial.
Disincentivizing gathering information from illegal searches is a feature and not a bug. The fact that the process I propose has side-effects like discouraging illegal activity like that shows it’s power.
I don’t think the system should be designed to give people who do illegal things more room to maneuver but to reduce that room.
Also, too, predicting outcomes is a skill separate from ability to generate outcomes.
The present system in the United States doesn’t select for the outcome of prosecutors persuing justice but often rewards them for doing unjust things like maximizing the amount of people they put behind bars.
I do think that prosecutors who’s mental focus when charging a person isn’t “how do I maximize the chances of getting this person behind bars” but who are also taking the outside view and think clearly through the likelihood of the person being convicted being are more likely to persue justice.
Also, also, too almost no prosecutors are directly elected, judging people by any raw metric is wierd and not done
The point is not to say that this should be the only metric that’s used to judge prosecutor performance alone but to design the system so that it’s one of the metrics that’s visible when decisions about prosecutor performance get made.
As far as judging people by performance metrics being weird, we do have a problem that many people prefer to judge expertise by college degrees then by actual performance metrics.
Chance of being convicted is very weakly correlated with actual guilt, or even procecutor knowledge of guilt. Consider the case of an illegal search that definitively proves guilt, but cannot be presented at trial. The prosecution would probably want to proceed with their 10% case, since they know the defendent is guilty, even though the jury won’t have key information.
Also, too, predicting outcomes is a skill separate from ability to generate outcomes. The Tails Come Apart, Goodheart, and all that..
Also, also, too almost no prosecutors are directly elected, judging people by any raw metric is wierd and not done—there would be some arbitrary cutoffs added to translate it to a quantified grading scale, and, as other commenters said, the root cause here is way deeper than “the DA charges 17 counts of assault, one for each blow, plus 3 Kidnapping, one for each grab, etc. Etc. Etc.
Disincentivizing gathering information from illegal searches is a feature and not a bug. The fact that the process I propose has side-effects like discouraging illegal activity like that shows it’s power.
I don’t think the system should be designed to give people who do illegal things more room to maneuver but to reduce that room.
The present system in the United States doesn’t select for the outcome of prosecutors persuing justice but often rewards them for doing unjust things like maximizing the amount of people they put behind bars.
I do think that prosecutors who’s mental focus when charging a person isn’t “how do I maximize the chances of getting this person behind bars” but who are also taking the outside view and think clearly through the likelihood of the person being convicted being are more likely to persue justice.
The point is not to say that this should be the only metric that’s used to judge prosecutor performance alone but to design the system so that it’s one of the metrics that’s visible when decisions about prosecutor performance get made.
As far as judging people by performance metrics being weird, we do have a problem that many people prefer to judge expertise by college degrees then by actual performance metrics.