As college students at Pro-Palestinian encampments began being arrested en masse in April 2024, The Appeal created the only national prosecutor tracker. It served as a vital resource for journalists and students, shifting the national conversation from police actions to the power of prosecutors.
Campus administrators had sought to quell protests. Campus security, local police departments, and other law enforcement officials were brought in to disperse and arrest protesters—sometimes incredibly violently. Students were teargassed, assaulted, and shot with rubber bullets. These encampments and mass arrests soared on April 25 and April 26, becoming headline news. In those two days, more than 470 people were arrested, including students at University of California, Los Angeles, Arizona State University, and Boston’s Emerson College.
With the nation’s attention focused on police arrests, our team looked at the next step in the criminal process: prosecutors. Prosecutors have a large amount of discretion in charging decisions, but they are rarely interrogated. As a critical election year, we also recognized that examining prosecutors’ charging decisions listing those alongside their next reelection would be a useful voting resource for readers.
Our tracker surveyed the lead prosecutor in every district with campus arrests or encampments. The goal was to inform readers if/how each prosecutor planned to charge student protestors.
To do so, we needed a list of arrests nation-wide. At the time there was none, so we built our own.
On April 25, two reporters, an editor, and a data editor, began compiling encampments and arrests across the country—a rapidly changing list. They also identified the prosecuting office, a complex task among the mix of district attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, city attorneys, and solicitor generals responsible for charging felonies and misdemeanors. Then, they reached out to every relevant prosecuting office to seek comment.
We used this data to create an interactive map with Flourish. Clicking on each campus displayed the number of arrests, prosecutor’s name, how the prosecutor responded, and their next reelection year.
This immense data project was published on April 26, within 24 hours of its creation. The tracker captured arrests and responses from more than 50 prosecutors and smaller city-level offices.
As arrests continued, so did our team. By April 30, we had tracked more than 1,300 arrests and responses from 70 prosecutors. This project continued to be updated weekly, with our team contacting more than 120 prosecutors responsible for charging nearly 3,000 arrested students.
This tracker and data visualization became a vital resource for journalists and students. It showed how local officials intend to use their charging powers on arrested students and how the public can use that information to inform their votes this election season.
