Abstract: In criminal cases, prosecutors have the discretion to adjust arresting officers’ charges — and so can offset racial disparities introduced by the police. Yet prior research suggests that prosecutors simply compound earlier racial disparities with their own biases. We investigate prosecutors’ impacts on racial disparities using discontinuities in North Carolina’s sentencing laws. For defendants with criminal histories that are slightly longer and so fall above certain thresholds, the law mandates a prison sentence. However, prosecutors can often sidestep mandatory prison for qualifying defendants by reducing their charge. We ask who benefits from these charging responses to the mandatory-prison discontinuities. Between 1995 and 2019, Black defendants were initially less likely — but ultimately became more likely — to benefit from charge reductions that avoid mandatory prison. The reversal is driven entirely by arrests typically initiated by police stops and is absent from arrests typically initiated by victims, suggesting that prosecutors have increasingly questioned disparities introduced by police.