APA acts as a global forum for the exchange of ideas, allowing prosecutors to collaborate with all criminal justice partners, conducting timely and effective technical assistance and providing access to technology for the enhancement of the prosecutorial function.
In addition, APA serves as an advocate for prosecutors on emerging issues related to the administration of justice and development of partnerships. APA keeps prosecutors informed about and involved with changes in both law and practice through regular training sessions, comprehensive publications, legislative analysis and amicus activity.
Animal Abuse
APA recognizes animal cruelty and fighting not only as precursor crimes to family and interpersonal violent crime, but also violent crime that should be effectively prosecuted. To achieve this end, APA developed a statement of principles regarding the prosecution of animal cruelty crimes and continues to provide a national technical assistance network as well as produce a quarterly newsletter, the Lex Canis. APA has also partnered with various animal welfare and other law enforcement organizations to hold an annual National Animal Cruelty Prosecution Conference to continue to develop ideas to fight animal cruelty and fighting.
Capital Case Litigation Initiative
The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys provides comprehensive training and technical assistance (TTA) services, tools, and resources to state and local prosecutors and other criminal justice practitioners on behalf of the Capital Case Litigation Initiative (CCLI).
Case Backlogs
Case Backlogs is a Stand Together Trust (STT)-funded effort to provide prosecutors with insights into the current state of case backlog around the country while also elevating model practices and protocols for addressing them. Prosecutor offices will be solicited to apply for specialized training and technical assistance (TTA) via an request for proposals, and those who require light touch TA may contact APA at any time to request peer-to-peer exchanges or access to case backlog-related materials and information.
The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys is pleased to offer a training and technical resource for child abuse prosecutors and their multi-disciplinary teams. This is a VOCA-funded project through OJJDP, is staffed with a team of child abuse professionals and is readily available to provide consultation, technical assistance and training.
Over the last decade, Conviction Integrity or Review Units have been created in prosecutors’ offices to review and, when appropriate, seek to overturn convictions where there is evidence of actual innocence, prosecutor or law enforcement misconduct, or other considerations that undermine the integrity of the conviction.
Collateral Consequences
The criminal justice system is rife with unnecessary collateral consequences that do not have anything to do with the underlying charge. APA, with funding from the Koch Foundation and the Coalition for Public Safety, works to address the issue of those collateral consequences, particularly those which impact housing and employment opportunities (such as drivers license suspension fines and fees).
Domestic Violence
Formed in 2017, APA’s Domestic Violence (DV) Prosecution Committee brings the nation’s leading working DV prosecutors and victim advocates together to advance the field of domestic violence prosecution and address the needs of DV prosecutors, managers, and victim advocates.
Gun Violence
The nation’s prosecutors maintain a special role within the community to do everything within their constitutional authority to decrease the number of gun-related crimes. APA and its member prosecutors, as community leaders, in partnership with criminal justice partners and the public, are committed to curbing gun violence and illegal gun related crime.
High Performance
High Performance (HP) is a Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) national training and technical assistance that provides support to prosecutors nationwide on implementing four key components of the HP model:
It does so by hosting national trainings such as the National Prosecution Summit and the Innovations in Criminal Justice Summit; offering intensive onsite training and technical assistance upon request; producing webinars, publications, and electronic newsletters; maintaining a HP Mentor Network that encourages peer-to-peer learning; and supporting a prosecution listserv.
Human Trafficking
Human Trafficking provides specific training, expertise, and guidance to increase the organizational capacity of multidisciplinary task forces to conduct a range of practices to better identify victims, connect them to appropriate services, and successfully investigate and prosecute human trafficking cases at the state, federal, and tribal levels.
Juvenile Justice
APA is committed to enhancing juvenile programs by providing civic education for all participants that builds respect for their rule of law and the legal process, including mentorship and community service opportunities, permit program referrals from prosecutors, police, probation departments and the courts, while not limiting program eligibility to first-time offenders.
APA also encourages judges, lawyers, law students, civic organizations and businesses to recruit volunteers and to provide training, other assistance and support to create, sustain and promote youth programs, and supports national, state, and local research and evaluation on all aspects of juvenile justice programs.
Mass Violence
Our country is experiencing unprecedented levels of violent crime and mass violence attacks, bringing tragedy and heartbreak to thousands across the country. These tragedies are preventable and APA is committed to providing the resources prosecutors need to address mass shootings, hate crimes, and other violent offenses that impact the community.
Pretrial Services
APA recognizes the value of accurate and reliable pretrial information provided to prosecutors and magistrates for the enhancement of public safety, safeguarding the judicial process, and aiding prosecutors in their ability to determine appropriate diversions and special court admissions. Pretrial services employing validated risk assessments provide useful data and offer practical information essential to making informed decisions during court proceedings and determining conditions of supervision and sentencing, when appropriate.
Procedural Justice
Procedural Justice, in partnership with Yale Law School’s Justice Collaboratory and LaGratta Consulting and supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, assess how city prosecutors interact with the surrounding community, implementing evidence-based practices to increase public trust. APA and the Justice Collaboratory have also selected two additional sites to continue their work on Procedural Justice, the Saint Paul City Attorney’s Office and the Columbus City Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutor-Led Diversion
The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA), in partnership with the Center for Court Innovation (CCI) and NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC), in collaboration with and administration by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), developed the Prosecutor-Led Diversion Initiative to sustain and create pre-trial prosecutor-led diversion programs with a substance abuse, mental health, and/or human trafficking component. Prosecutor-Led Diversion will meet the present national need for training and technical assistance in an effort to improve the prosecutorial function by making more informed decisions and can be a smart strategy for improving public safety, allocating prosecution resources, reducing recidivism, and providing offenders with a second chance for success.
Prosecutorial Performance Indicators
The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA), in partnership with the Florida International University and Loyola University Chicago, implemented Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPIs) to develop dashboards in prosecutors’ offices nationwide. PPIs are a suite of modern indicators for prosecutors committed to measuring effectiveness, efficiency and fairness. PPIs act as an office management, performance measurement, and accountability and transparency tool. These measures can help office executives, especially mid-level management, to understand trends of their decision making. While each individual case needs to be assessed to determine the just and most appropriate outcome, it is important to also examine the cumulative effect of these decisions over time.
Prosecutors for Prosecutors
Thousands of U.S. and allied trained prosecutors were left behind in Afghanistan. They are being hunted by the Taliban. Many have been tortured and killed. The rest remain in hiding— unemployed and facing famine and starvation. Our Goal: Raise $15 Million to save the lives of 1,500 Afghan prosecutors and their families by evacuating them and relocating them to a safe country. Our Ask: Donate Today. We can not stand by and let our colleagues in Afghanistan be killed for upholding the rule of law. They are one of us.
Safety + Justice Challenge
APA is one of the strategic allies supporting the Safety + Justice Challenge. APA will provide technical assistance and resources to the 9 core sites to assist them with implementing and sustaining their evidence-based programs. The core sites, partner sites, and strategic allies will participate in two Leadership Institutes hosted by APA where the sites and allies will learn from each other and successful peers in the field about how to overcome the challenges of ensuring the safety of the community is met using means that offer justice to the system participants and the community. APA is producing a white paper and several newsletters, which will highlight some of those innovative diversion and alternative sentencing methods, as well as some of the structural and cultural realities of implementing these programs.
Addressing Disparities to Reproductive Health
Addressing Disparities to Reproductive Health is APA’s initiative designed to support prosecutors nationally to reduce reproductive health-related investigations and prosecutions including pregnancy loss and abortion. Addressing Disparities to Reproductive Health is funded by the Ford Foundation through the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity (CGRE).
Smart Prosecution Initiative
APA was the training and technical assistance (TTA) provider for Smart Prosecution from October 2014 until March 2018, a program funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). The focus of APA’s program was to assist prosecutor -led grantees to successfully develop, implement and sustain their own BJA-funded crime-solving initiative. Prosecutor-led grantees engaged in a partnership with researchers to effectively plan and execute their data-driven initiative. APA provided extensive training and technical assistance to each of the fourteen Smart Prosecution grantee programs. With the assistance of grantees and their partners, APA developed a wide-range of materials to assist the field including webinars, facts sheets and monographs.
Victims’ Rights & Resources
APA recognizes that one of the most important measures of the effectiveness of a criminal justice system may be found in how it responds to crimes against its most vulnerable victims and whether it has the courage to hold those who prey upon special victims accountable. There are many government and non-profit organizational resources available to citizens who have or who have family and friends who have been victimized. One such resource is the U.S. Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime.