Holding Prosecutors Accountable: What Is Successful Prosecutorial Performance and Why Should It Be Measured? Highlights from Ndaa's Prosecution Performance Measures Project (National District Attorneys Ass'n‪)‬

Editor's Note: The American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI, the research and development division of the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA)) has recently published the final report in the PERFORMANCE MEASURES FOR PROSECUTORS SPECIAL TOPICS SERIES. This series of publications presents the work that APRI has conducted over the past five years in conjunction with prosecutors, legislators, and others as part of the Performance Measures for Prosecutors Project. The goal of the project was to address the lack of an empirical, scientific, and tested method for measuring prosecutor performance in the criminal justice system. The latest publication presents the final results of the project in its attempts to develop a system of performance measures for local prosecutors, implement the measures, and test them in real-world settings to confirm that they are valid and reliable measures that will be valuable to prosecutors for a variety of practical uses. In this article, we share some key highlights of the project and hope that it will encourage local prosecutors to further explore the utility of performance measurement for their own offices. Where applicable, we reference other publications in the series for further information. All publications are freely available for download on NDAA's Web site at: http://www.ndaaapri.org/researeh/research_home.html. The Prosecution Performance Measurement Project has produced a series of publications including: