Suffolk County District Attorney's Office

This is a state performance audit of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office covering July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2015.

“I am pleased to provide this performance audit of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.”

Auditors checked spending, forfeited funds, and asset safeguards to see whether the office had proper controls and followed applicable requirements.

“This audit was undertaken to review certain aspects of SCDA operations related to non-personnel expenditures, state forfeited funds, and safeguarding of assets, in order to determine whether SCDA had established adequate internal controls and complied with applicable laws, regulations, policies, procedures, and other guidance in the areas reviewed.”

The office handles criminal prosecutions and related public-safety work, so its money and property need to be managed properly.

“District Attorneys’ Offices represent the Commonwealth in most criminal proceedings brought by complaint in the district courts, as well as indictment in the superior courts.”

For residents, the takeaway is that the audited spending and asset controls for this prosecutor’s office did not show major problems.

“Based on our audit, we have concluded that for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2015, SCDA had established adequate controls and complied with applicable laws, regulations, policies, procedures, and other guidance for the areas we reviewed that were related to our audit objectives.”

The auditors answered yes to each audit question and found no significant deficiencies in the areas they tested.

“Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding each objective.”

The excerpt does not list corrective actions or recommendations, because the audit did not find significant deficiencies in the reviewed areas.

“My audit staff discussed the contents of this report with court management, whose comments are reflected in this report.”

This matters because the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is a large, busy prosecutor’s office with many cases, employees, and public funds under its care.

“According to its website, SCDA is “the largest and busiest district attorney’s office in New England,” handling “more than 35,000 criminal cases each year.””

“Nonstatistical sampling” means auditors tested selected transactions and items, but the results apply only to those samples, not automatically to everything the office did.

“Whenever sampling was used, we applied a nonstatistical approach; consequently, the results of our tests cannot be projected over the entire population and only apply to the items selected.”