Counties that narrowly elect a Republican prosecutor see fewer young men die. A new analysis of close elections finds all-cause mortality among men aged 20 to 29 falls by 6.6%, and the main reason seems to be that more convictions keep guns out of reach.
The working paper, dated February 2026, is by Panka Bencsik of Vanderbilt University and Tyler Giles of Wellesley College. It is available on SSRN.
Close elections as a natural experiment
Prosecutors decide whether to file charges, how severe they are and how hard to fight for a sentence. Legal scholars have called them the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system, yet their effect on community outcomes is little studied.
Comparing counties with Republican and Democratic prosecutors directly would be misleading, because the counties differ in many ways. So the authors used a regression discontinuity design: they compared counties where a Republican candidate narrowly won with those where one narrowly lost, on the logic that such near-ties are close to random.
The sample covers 368 closely contested partisan prosecutor elections from 2010 to 2019, spanning 520 counties that contain about 23% of the US population. Mortality data came from the CDC’s Multiple Cause of Death files, combined with data on jail and prison admissions and criminal convictions.
Fewer gun deaths, especially among Black men
Narrowly electing a Republican prosecutor led to 9.8 fewer deaths per 100,000 men aged 20 to 29, a 6.6% drop. The decline came mostly from firearm deaths.
Among young Black men, the effect showed up as a large fall in gun homicides. Among young White men, it was a smaller reduction in gun suicides and accidents. Those patterns mirror the baseline: homicides make up 85% of firearm deaths among Black men, while suicides and accidents make up 63% among White men.
The authors found no effect on overall drug or opioid overdose deaths, though among middle-aged people a drop in heroin overdoses may be offset by a rise in prescription opioid deaths.
Convictions, not mainly prison
Prison admissions rose among Black men, but the authors estimate incarceration explains only about a third of the mortality drop in that group and none of it among White men. Jail admissions did not clearly change, suggesting little shift in policing.
What did change was the number of convictions, which rose for misdemeanors and felonies and for violent, drug and property offenses alike. Federal law bars people with felony convictions, and some misdemeanor convictions, from owning guns, and several states add further restrictions. The authors estimate that roughly one firearm death is prevented for every 90 new restrictions imposed each year.
Several checks support the design. Counties on either side of the threshold looked alike beforehand, there was no effect on pre-election mortality, and there was no effect on deaths from diseases, which prosecutors should not influence.
The authors stress a trade-off. Conviction-based gun restrictions bring public health benefits, but they come through criminal justice contact that carries real social costs. They ask whether other policies could reduce firearm access among high-risk people without requiring a conviction at all.
Study Details:
- Title: Local Prosecutors and Public Health
- Authors: Panka Bencsik, Tyler Giles
- Journal: Working paper (SSRN)
- Publication Date: February 2026
- DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.6304441