The institution known as baad is an mechanism used typically in criminal justice systems of Pashtun societies. In baad the family of a harmed individual abducts a young girl from the family of the one who caused the harm. The abducted girls are typically treated very poorly and held against...

Prosecutors under common‐law tradition exercise a significant amount of discretion in the criminal justice system. In the United States, the dominant form of accountability is that prosecutors must be reelected by the voters. Recent empirical work illustrates that election concerns open up the...

In the U.S. many public services are provided by individuals who are selected in local elections. The incentives created by the election mechanism are relatively understudied. One of these public actors is the prosecutor. The U.S. is unique in the world in its use of popular elections to select...