Ruptured alliances: Prosecutorial lobbying, victims’ interests and punishment policy in Illinois
| Author | Anya Degenshein |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221077680 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Ruptured alliances:
Prosecutorial lobbying,
victims’interests and
punishment policy in Illinois
Anya Degenshein
Department of Social and Cultural Sciences,
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Abstract
Using a combination of FOIA-requested legislative committee hearings and in-depth
interviews, this manuscript investigates the work of Illinois prosecutorial lobbyists in
state-level crime policy during a time of penal reform. I find that prosecutorial lobbyists
are a regular and influential presence in policy discussions, advocating primarily for ’law
and order’policies that expand prosecutorial discretion, even following the Great
Recession. I also find that they repeatedly evoke their relationship to crime victims to
frame their policy positions for a bipartisan audience. However, attention to discourse
reveals that victims’own interests regularly clash with prosecutorial discretion. These
clashes create what I term discursive ruptures, or uncomfortable and surprising rhetorical
fissures that emerge in what is otherwise seen as a near iron-clad political alliance. In
such instances, prosecutors risk alienating a key source of their political legitimacy to
protect their own discretionary authority. Beyond insight into momentary political dis-
comfort, these ruptures suggest that the powerful and productive alliance between pro-
secutors and victims is neither as natural nor as robust as relational perspectives have
generally assumed, unearthing fault lines in prosecutors’unparalleled power to punish.
Keywords
prosecutors, lobbying, victims, crime policy, discourse, “tough on crime”
Corresponding author:
Anya Degenshein, Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University, P.O. Box 188, Milwaukee,
WI 53201-1881, USA.
Email: anya.degenshein@marquette.edu
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(2) 407–429
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745221077680
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
Introduction
Over the past fifteen years, scholars have increasingly noted US prosecutors’unparalleled
powers to punish. Prosecutors have sole discretion in determining whom to bring charges
against, which charges to bring, and which plea deals to offer, if any (Lynch, 2016; Pfaff,
2017; Alexander, 2012). As such, county-level prosecutors have uniquely benefitted from
‘tough on crime’policies enacted across the country in the late 20
th
and early 21
st
cen-
turies (Simon, 2007), which stiffened carceral penalties, providing prosecutors with
greater leverage to plea bargain with defendants (Lynch, 2016). Even amidst more
recent calls for criminal justice reform, not only have prosecutors’discretionary
powers remained intact, but the crime policies amplifying these powers have undergone
only modest reforms (Beckett and Beach, 2020). It is perhaps surprising, then, that the
work of state-level prosecutorial lobbyists, who seek to directly influence crime policy,
has received little attention from punishment scholars.
This article addresses this empirical gap by examining the work of prosecutorial lob-
byists in Springfield, Illinois in the years following the Great Recession. Like many states
across the country, Illinois experienced modest declines in its prison population in the
decade following the Recession (Vera Institute of Justice, 2019) as it coped with budget-
ary constraints as well as increasing calls to reform a racially unequal and highly punitive
criminal justice system (Jackson-Green, 2016). Like most states, Illinois residents also
elect prosecutors to serve specific jurisdictions (Perry, 2006), resulting in
post-Recession elections of prosecutors from larger, urban counties who ran on platforms
of reform, and from smaller, more rural counties who campaigned on more conservative,
‘law and order’platforms. As such, it presents a good opportunity to examine prosecu-
torial lobbying in an environment that is simultaneously receptive to calls for criminal
justice reform, but unexceptional in its general approach to punishment.
Drawing on four years and over 110 h of FOIA requested recordings of state-level,
legislative committee hearings, as well as in-depth interviews with prosecutorial lobbyists
and their legislative interlocutors and adversaries, I ask, what role do prosecutorial lob-
byists play in the early stages of Illinois crime policy, and how do they frame this
work to suit a variety of political tastes? I find that prosecutorial lobbyists are early
and frequent participants in crafting state crime legislation. They are regular participants
in House Judiciary Committee hearings, where they both introduce bills and take official
positions on others’bills to protect and expand prosecutorial discretion. While the aim of
this work is no secret, prosecutors frame and legitimate these efforts by aligning their
positions with victims’interests. Committee transcripts reveal that this powerful political
alliance is not as iron-clad, or mutually beneficial, as it is often portrayed, though. Paying
close attention to policy debate rather than outcomes, I identify numerous incidents of
what I term discursive ruptures, or rhetorical breaks in which prosecutorial interests
are at odds with those of crime victims, raising questions about the strength of this stal-
wart political alliance.
This work intervenes into two interrelated bodies of punishment scholarship. First,
recent studies by Beckett and Beach (2020) and others have demonstrated the failed
hope of meaningful criminal justice reform following the Great Recession, pointing to
408 Punishment & Society 25(2)
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