The nation's state prosecutors increased their staffs by 44% in the last three decades, says the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics in its first survey of the field since 2007. In 2020, the 2,347 prosecutor offices in the U.S. employed 35,120 attorneys. Nearly 12,000 attorneys were employed in jurisdictions with populations of 1 million or more residents. About 80% of full-time attorneys employed at state prosecutor offices were white, and half were female. There were 44,150 non-attorney staff members, including investigators, victim and witness staff, support staff, and review and redaction staff. Prosecutors spent more than $6 billion in 2020.
Prosecutors denied police applications for criminal charges in 22% of cases, the survey found. Some two-thirds of felony cases ended in plea bargains. About 70% of state prosecutor offices provided direct assistance to domestic violence victims, and 75% provided victims with referrals to outside agencies for assistance. The report excluded data from federal, tribal, and municipal prosecutors as well as prosecutors handling exclusively juvenile cases and county prosecutors who operate in courts of limited jurisdiction. BJS also is conducting a census of public defenders' offices.
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