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The Relationship of Judicial and Prosecutorial Elections to the Availability of Sentencing Data in the United States

The availability of statewide sentencing information can increase the transparency of the criminal justice system by allowing courts, practitioners, and the public to see trends and anomalies in sentencing. The existence of such information may create expectations and political pressure that affect the elections of judges and prosecutors. However, research has found that lower independence and higher accountability through elections does not necessarily come to bear as expected due to unique characteristics of judicial and prosecutorial elections. Given the potential impact of widely available sentencing data on the election of prosecutors and judges, this article examines if there is any association between the type of selection for judges and prosecutors and the availability of sentencing data. Further, it explores if there are examples of available sentencing data being used negatively during campaigns in a small sample of states. The evidence presented here suggests that concerns about decreased independence of the judiciary and malicious political use of information are not strong enough to outweigh the benefits of data availability nor have these potential problems come to bear in selected states with available sentencing data.