Criminal Justice Reform, Monetary Incentives, and Policy Evaluation

In this paper we look at a highly imaginative, quintessentially 1980's innovation -- the use of financial incentives to encourage prosecutors to process more quickly their oldest cases and their cases involving defendants incarcerated pre-trial. Measured by conventional "bottom line" criteria, the incentive scheme can be labeled a failure. But measured by the limited actual success at least one office achieved and by the general effectiveness of the incentives as motivators for three out of the four offices studied, a somewhat more positive assessment of the efficacy of incentives can be fashioned. 3 tables, 32 notes, 27 references. (Author abstract)