Statewide Best Practices Committees for Prosecutors: A Nationwide Movement

Author(s): Kristine Hamann, Rebecca Rader Brown

A prosecutor’s core mission is and has always been to promote justice and to protect the community by ensuring public safety. Over the past 30 years, the way prosecutors approach this mission has evolved. In place of the old, reactive criminal justice model, prosecutors and police are using new methods and evidence to take a proactive, broader approach to preventing, investigating, and prosecuting crime.

Prosecutor-focused courses in law schools are an excellent way for prosecutors to expose law students to their work and to have students available to do research on prosecution issues.  Statewide Best Practices Committees have benefited from working with their local law schools to develop classes that can focus on emerging issues and policy questions. 

One of the many benefits of being part of the Best Practices network is the ability to share information with prosecutors across the country about promising programs and how to implement them. Prosecutors’ Center for Excellence (PCE) held a two-day conference in Boston on July 19 and 20, 2016 with prosecutors from 17 states in attendance. One topic was how to create community programs on a shoe string.

Here is a sampling of the varied – and excellent – programs highlighted during the meeting: