Bias Kognitif dalam Pengambilan Keputusan Penuntutan: Investigasi Empiris terhadap Jaksa Penuntut Umum

Abstract

Prosecutorial decision-making is commonly understood as a legal judgment grounded in evidence and statutory requirements, yet the cognitive processes underlying such decisions remain insufficiently examined. This study investigates how cognitive biases shape prosecutorial decision-making and how professional experience, organizational pressure, and reflective mechanisms influence the quality of prosecutorial judgments. Drawing on a behavioral legal studies perspective, the study employs an explanatory sequential mixed-method design combining vignette-based experimentation with semi-structured interviews. The analysis focuses on four cognitive mechanisms: confirmation bias, anchoring bias, availability heuristic, and overconfidence. The findings indicate that confirmation bias represents the most prominent tendency, followed by anchoring bias, overconfidence, and availability heuristic. Professional experience does not automatically eliminate cognitive bias, while organizational pressure is associated with lower decision quality. Conversely, structured peer review and professional consultation emerge as potential corrective mechanisms that support more reflective evaluation of evidence. These findings extend existing research on legal decision-making by connecting individual cognitive mechanisms with organizational conditions in prosecutorial practice. The study proposes a Prosecutorial Cognitive Bias Framework that conceptualizes prosecutorial decision quality as the outcome of interactions between cognitive processing, professional experience, case characteristics, and institutional conditions. The framework provides a basis for developing structured debiasing strategies, evidence-review procedures, and institutional safeguards aimed at strengthening consistency, objectivity, and accountability in prosecutorial decision-making.