NCJ Number
130564
Date Published
1991
Length
110 pages
Annotation
The process for allocating attorneys among the 94 U.S. Attorney offices was reviewed to determine if there were staffing disparities and ways to reduce these disparities.
Abstract
The allocation model distributed additional positions to the attorney offices in such a way as to reduce staffing disparities identified by the workload model. This model can be applied either to total criminal or civil workloads or to more specific areas such as drugs. Interpreted with due care, these models could aid in assessing staffing needs by better measuring the complexity of workloads and allocating additional positions to reduce such disparities. Resource disparities exist among the U.S. Attorney offices. On the basis of fiscal year 1989 data, the model results showed 44 offices that expended significantly less criminal attorney time than expected and 35 offices that expended less civil attorney time than expected. Conversely, 22 offices used more criminal time than expected, and 37 offices used more civil time than expected. A literature review was conducted on case weighing models. A set of hypotheses about the relative attorney time requirements of different types of cases was developed. The hypotheses helped to identify variables which could be used to classify cases according to their relative time requirements.