Justice Department have started requiring all prosecutors to maintain at least 25 open cases, tightening the Trump administration’s grip on operational decisions previously left to US attorneys, per Bloomberg Law.
At this point, DOJ's staffing crisis has become a story with no shortage of plotlines.
This is the same Department where an exhausted line prosecutor asked a federal judge to hold her in contempt so she could get 24 hours of sleep, telling the court bluntly, "The system sucks. This job sucks."
There were the emergency "jump teams," sending prosecutors from across the country to plug staffing holes wherever the latest crisis emerged. There was the decision to suspend the traditional one-year experience requirement for new prosecutors. Then came the $25,000 signing bonuses, employee referral campaigns, and recruiting posts on social media that sometimes looked less like hiring for the nation's top law enforcement agency and more like trying to round out a neighborhood kickball team.
On paper, the benchmark is not particularly demanding. Prosecutors handling high-volume firearms, immigration, or narcotics dockets often carry well beyond 25 active matters without much difficulty.
Another prosecutor may spend months immersed in a single complex public corruption, national security, or healthcare fraud investigation. Likewise, offices serving Indian Country, military installations, border districts, or other specialized jurisdictions often face caseloads that look nothing like those in larger metropolitan districts.
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