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Convictability and Discordant Locales: Reproducing Race, Class, and Gender Ideologies in Prosecutorial Decisionmaking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Lisa Frohmann
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Abstract

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Using ethnographic data, I examine prosecutors' discourse on case convictability (the likelihood of a guilty verdict at trial) in sexual assault cases. The analysis shows how prosecutors construct discordant locales through their categorization of victims, defendants, jurors, and their communities and the location of crime incidents. It demonstrates how prosecutors use discordant locales to justify case rejection. By ascribing stereotypical characteristics of a neighborhood to victims, defendants, and jurors, prosecutors construct distinct groups with different cultures who live in geographically separate spaces and have different schemes through which they interpret the everyday world. To construct discordant locale categorizations, prosecutors employ race, class, and gender imagery. Through this imagery they construct multiple normative standards of moral character of persons and of places. I argue that through the categorizations of place as discordant locales, prosecutors inadvertently reproduce race, class, and gender ideologies in legal decisionmaking. I conclude with policy suggestions for expanding and equalizing citizens' access to justice.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , 1997 , pp. 531 - 556
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I thank the women and men of the sexual assault unit in which I observed for sharing their lives. Without their openness this research would not have been possible. I am very grateful to Nancy A. Matthews, Gregory M. Matoesian, and Mindie Lazarus-Black for their detailed comments and advice, which have played an important role in the development of this article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and Deborah Levinson, William Black, Michael Maltz, Elizabeth Mertz, Anne Figert, Wayne Kerstetter, Steve Herbert, Jacqueline Battalora, John Hagedorn, Grey Cavendor, and Pamela Brandwein for their encouragement and critical readings.

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