7. October, at 11.00 am.
WELCOME!
We kindly invite you to a lecture by a PhD researcher, Alena McClure, entitled “Negotiating Authority: Prosecutors’ Perceptions of the Supervisory Role in Sentencing”, which will take place as part of Tuesday Meetings on Tuesday, 7 October 2025, at 11.00 am in the library of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana.
Although prosecutors play a pivotal role in shaping sentencing outcomes, they remain understudied. Their influence–exercised through doctrinal, organizational, and psychological mechanisms–is especially visible in their sentence recommendations. Yet, because prosecutors’ offices operate as closed institutions, little is known about the internal dynamics that shape these decisions.
This talk examines how prosecutors understand and navigate authority in sentencing, focusing on the tension between the independence of line prosecutors and the hierarchical oversight of their supervisors. Drawing on interviews with both line and head prosecutors, I explore perceptions of their roles, strategies for recommending sentences, scope of their sentencing discretion, and the dynamics of supervisory intervention.
By tracing how managerial strategies affect individual decision-making, the talk highlights the organizational and relational dimensions that structure sentencing practices. In doing so, it sheds light on how authority is negotiated within prosecutorial offices and how this negotiation shapes sentencing outcomes more broadly.
Alena McClure is a PhD researcher at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague. Her work focuses on the role of prosecutors in sentencing and the broader dynamics of the criminal justice system, with particular attention to the challenges of achieving consistent and principled sentencing. She combines her legal training with both qualitative and quantitative methods, working to tackle the striking lack of data on prosecution. Alongside her research, she teaches criminology and sentencing, and is a co-founder of a faculty methodology discussion group–a community space where students of all levels share their research and receive feedback.
