Decision-Making Of The District Attorney: Diverting Or Prosecuting Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse Offenders

This research involves the assessment of the consistency between stated referral guidelines and the actual criteria used by a District Attorney's office to select defendants for participation in a pre-trial diversion program for intrafamilial child sexual abuse offenders. Diverted and non-diverted groups were compared with regard to two sets of factors (formal screening criteria and offender and offense variables that were unrelated to the formal diversion guidelines) to assess target population coverage and bias. The results are discussed in the context of legal parameters of prosecutorial discretion.