DA district atty prosecut

belated? lately 2018 effort to elect left to do crim just reform?<div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/wisconsin-bail/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/wisconsin-bail/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">xmas holiday mkt, so not political?  kochs boast about crim just reform? recent left DA wins eg SF?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>After an SUV plowed through a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin on November 21, killing five people and injuring 48, including many children, hard-right pundits treated the subsequent arrest of Darrell Brooks like a gift.Jennifer Van Laar, the editor of popular conservative blog Red State, <a href="https://twitter.com/jenvanlaar/status/1462876485480431619?s=21" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted</a>, "FIFTY PAGES in Darrell Brooks' criminal record. Drugs, violence, crimes of moral turpitude, sexual offenses. But hey, let's allow him to bond out on $1000 even though he's charged with jumping bail."<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/07/08/jack-posobiecs-rise-tied-white-supremacist-movement" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Alt-right troll</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1462847386489954312?s=21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Jack Posobiec</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/23/in-coronavirus-tweet-storm-trump-touts-suspect-cure.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">COVID-19 disinformation spreader</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/chuckcallesto/status/1462765432801312775?s=21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Chuck Callesto</a> echoed this idea. Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson went a step further, <a href="https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1462844637018832908?s=21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">blaming</a> Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm for the incident. So did Mike Cernovich, who ripped into Chisholm as a "<a href="https://twitter.com/cernovich/status/1462647950941773831?s=21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Soros DA</a>," despite Chisholm never receiving money from George Soros or his affiliated PACs.DA Chisholm, as a writer at Red State <a href="https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/11/22/new-prosecutors-office-makes-big-admission-about-suspected-waukesha-mass-murderer-n480071" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">put it</a>, is allegedly a "radical leftist who has sought to institute 'criminal justice reform' via 'bail reform.'" It is insinuated that Chisholm quietly ushered Brooks out on a serious and recent domestic violence charge on $1,000 bail, then rolled it back in the media after the tragedy, claiming that his deputy prosecutor made a mistake (Chisholm has now launched an investigation into the Brooks bail decision).Such commentators are in desperate need of a fact-check.Wisconsin is not like California or New Jersey, which saw bail reform legislation pass in the last few years. It has not had a substantial amendment to its <a href="https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/969/Title" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">bail law</a> in at least 10 years, according to the Wisconsin state legislature's website.However, the current law <a href="https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/969/Title" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">does state</a> that a judge can hold a person charged with a crime in jail pretrial "only upon a finding by the court that there is a reasonable basis to believe that bail is necessary to assure appearance in court."Meanwhile, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Wisconsin_State_Senate" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">both</a> <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Wisconsin_State_Assembly" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">chambers</a> of the Wisconsin legislature have been dominated by Republicans every year in the last decade.Besides which, if we look at bail reform on a statistical, rather than anecdotal, level, it does not reduce public safety. The vast majority of people facing charges <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a32782804/bail-funds-george-floyd-protests-pretrial-detention/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">return to court</a> regardless of money bail. In addition, detaining people pretrial, effectively punishing poverty, is "criminogenic," because people <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/11/17/pretrial-releases/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">lose their jobs</a> and community ties are weakened."Money bail compromises public safety," according to <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/08/24/bail/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">analysis</a> from the Prison Policy Initiative.As Cernovich points out to support his cause, Chisholm has delivered criminal justice reform talking points. But Chisholm has rarely delivered anything on decarceration but talking points. The Democrat, first elected in 2006, has spent much of his career carefully avoiding policies that would make right-wing opponents angry.In 2017, for example, Chisholm explained how he <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/columnists/jim-stingl/2017/08/11/stingl-more-states-legalize-weed-second-offense-possession-still-felony-wisconsin/554080001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">refuses</a> to categorically drop marijuana possession cases, despite many of his peers elsewhere doing just that.Chisholm is also the orchestrator of a national strategy to increase the use of drug-induced homicide prosecutions to people who sell drugs as murderers, despite people who have overdosed <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/25/drug-induced-homicide-laws-former-heroin-addict-216507/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">often not wanting this response</a>. He has sent Assistant District Attorney Patricia Daughtery to national conferences to evangelize these prosecutions. Daughtery has gone so far as to advise officials to build cases using tactics that are disrespectful to the same people she is supposedly trying to protect, such as <a href="https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/dpa_drug_induced_homicide_report_0.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">using the cell phones of people who overdosed</a>.Additionally, during Chisholm's tenure, Wisconsin had the highest rate of Black incarceration in the nation, with about 65 percent of Black Wisconsinites living in Milwaukee County. University of Wisconsin law professor Ion Meyn has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisconsin-leads-nation-imprisonment-rates-black-people-rcna4160" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">raised concerns</a> that part of this is due to higher prosecution rates and lower plea bargain rates for Black suspects.Amid Chisholm's middle-of-the-road approach to his office, Milwaukee has <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">one of the highest violent crime rates in the country</a>, with 1,332 incidents for every 100,000 residents. His attempt to please everyone and incense no one has achieved little, and there are numerous progressive steps he should be taking. Chances are, the politicization of the Brooks case will increase the DA's timidity and push him in the opposite direction.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div>=</div><div>10 21 an</div><div>
</div><div>progressive district attorneys across the country are pushing back against aggressive, Republican-backed state laws that are seen as assaults on democracy. According to The Associated Press, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/crime-tampa-tennessee-nashville-787cae9774f5fa36797ce89bb25932a7" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">progressive local officials have developed ways to work around controversial laws.</a></div>From charges for low-level marijuana offenses to restrictive laws targeting protesters, progressive district attorneys have decided on a simple way to get around the laws: they are simply refusing to enforce them. The AP describes their approach as "a strategy at work in response to some of the most controversial new changes in recent years — near-total abortion bans, voting restrictions, limits on certain protest activity, laws aimed at LGBTQ people, and restrictions on mask requirements."In Nashville, Tenn., District Attorney General Glenn Funk (D) has made a habit of not enforcing Republican-backed state laws. Speaking to AP News, he explained his stance."It's also incumbent, I think, upon public officials who disagree to stand up and say so," Funk told The Associated Press. "Because if people who are elected officials just stay quiet in the face of unconstitutional laws being passed, in the face of a social debate that might actually be dehumanizing large sections of our population, then if nobody speaks up, then the impression is that there is a not another side to this argument and that there really is no argument."One advantage progressive DAs have is the fact that their approach is popular among voters in the deep-blue states where they hold positions. The strategy has also served as a strong politically favorable tactic for their re-election campaigns."The real limit on this is political," said William & Mary Law School professor Jeffrey Bellin. "These prosecutors have to stand for election almost everywhere in the country. Ultimately, the limit on this is popularity."AP also notes how the laws typically lean in favor of prosecutors as they "wield wide discretion over whom to charge with crimes, and they can hold off based on factors that include the strength of an individual case, the severity of the offense and, sometimes, the prosecutor's views on a law's constitutionality."Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, explained what the progressive district attorney movement could signify going forward."We know that our country has seen a past where some have sought to criminalize interracial marriage or individuals of different race who choose to sit at a lunch counter together, or ride a bus together, or use certain bathrooms and certain drinking fountains," said Krinsky. "Change often starts at the ground and moves its way on up."<div>=an 820<div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-progressive-prosecutor-movement-is-spreading-but-unevenly/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(255, 187, 99); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"> ‘progressive prosecutor’ movement is spreading — but unevenly</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/roryfleming1/" title="Posts by Rory Fleming" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Rory Fleming</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/filter/" title="Posts by Filter " class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Filter</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is hard for prosecutors to let go of the prosecutorial identity, as seen by the numerous US politicians and pundits who use the refrain “as a former prosecutor” to…</div> =<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-being-tough-on-crime-became-a-political-liability-128515">https://theconversation.com/how-being-tough-on-crime-became-a-political-liability-128515</a><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Kamala Harris recently dropped out of the presidential race after months of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">attacks from the left</a> for her “tough-on-crime” record as San Francisco’s district attorney and as California’s attorney general.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">A few years ago, the idea that being tough on crime would be a liability – not an asset – was unthinkable for both Democrats and Republicans.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Bill Clinton, during the 1992 presidential race, interrupted his campaign so he could return to Arkansas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/25/us/1992-campaign-death-penalty-arkansas-execution-raises-questions-governor-s.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">to witness the execution of a mentally disabled man</a>. During Harris’ 2014 reelection campaign for attorney general, she actively sought – and won – the endorsements <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/kamala-harris-was-impossible-bind/602971/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">of more than 50 law enforcement groups</a> en route to <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/California_Attorney_General_election,2014" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">a landslide victory</a>.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">But something has changed in recent years. Harris’ failure to gain traction as a presidential candidate has coincided with a growing number of “progressive prosecutors.”<p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">In the past, I would have scoffed at the notion of a progressive prosecutor. It would have seemed like a ridiculous oxymoron.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">But in one of the most stunning shifts in American politics in recent memory, a wave of elected prosecutors have bucked a decadeslong tough-on-crime approach adopted by both major parties. These prosecutors are refusing to send low-level, non-violent offenders to prison, diverting defendants into treatment programs, working to eradicate the death penalty and reversing wrongful convictions.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">The unchecked power of prosecutors</h2>In 1968, when I was 8 years old, my father was sentenced to 22 to 55 years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for the possession and sale of marijuana. During the trial, the district attorney had repeatedly assured the jurors that he hadn’t promised the state’s principal witness – then serving a long sentence – leniency in return for testifying against my father.In truth, they had struck that very bargain. After studying the warden’s own law books, my father appealed the conviction, representing himself. He was ultimately <a href="https://casetext.com/case/armour-v-salisbury" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">vindicated by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals</a> after proving that the district attorney had deliberately lied to the jury.That was in 1974. I went on to become <a href="https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/?id=129" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">a lawyer and law professor</a>. During the years I spent teaching and studying the relationship between race and the law, <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/US-prison-pop-1925-2017.png" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">the prison population exploded</a>, and my distrust toward government prosecutors only deepened. Too often, it seemed like they were bringing excessively punitive charges <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/12/05/offer-you-cant-refuse/how-us-federal-prosecutors-force-drug-defendants-plead" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">in order to force defendants into plea deals</a>. Too often, their approach seemed to reflect a longing for retribution and revenge rather than rehabilitation.In 2017, law professor John Pfaff <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Locked_In/BirXCwAAQBAJ?hl=en" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">was able to show</a> that mass incarceration was due, first and foremost, to the nearly unchecked power of district attorneys.With reported crimes and arrests <a href="https://qz.com/923037/americas-mass-incarceration-crisis-cant-be-fixed-until-we-realize-we-have-been-looking-at-the-problem-all-wrong/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">steadily declining in the 1990s and 2000s</a>, you might have expected incarceration rates to also fall. Instead, they soared. Pfaff traces this perplexing trend to <a href="https://qz.com/923037/americas-mass-incarceration-crisis-cant-be-fixed-until-we-realize-we-have-been-looking-at-the-problem-all-wrong/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">one key statistic</a>: Between 1994 and 2008, the probability that a district attorney would file a felony charge against someone who’s been arrested <a href="http://bostonreview.net/race-law-justice/vesla-m-weaver-untold-story-mass-incarceration" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">roughly doubled</a>, from about 1 in 3 to nearly 2 in 3.ore than stiff drug laws, punitive judges, overzealous cops or private prisons, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/prosecutors-role-in-causing--and-solving--the-problem-of-mass-incarceration/2019/04/19/d370d844-5c93-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">prosecutors had been the main drivers</a> of a <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/US-prison-pop-1925-2017.png" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">prison population</a> that had quadrupled since the mid-1980s.Meanwhile, black Americans continued to be disproportionately incarcerated. In 2017, there were 1,549 black prisoners for every 100,000 black adults – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-gap-between-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">nearly six times</a> the incarceration rate for whites and nearly double the rate for Hispanics.This prosecutorial approach wasn’t punished at the ballot box; instead, racking up convictions and plea deals <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-too-dangerous-to-elect-prosecutors" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">seemed to bolster the political careers of district attorneys</a>.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">The new sheriffs in town</h2>No longer.Since 2013, roughly 30 reform-minded prosecutors have been elected. A few now preside over prosecutorial staffs in some of the nation’s biggest cities, like Philadelphia’s <a href="https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/11/07/larry-krasner-wins-district-attorney-general-election/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Larry Krasner</a> and Boston’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/09/07/boston-suffolk-county-district-attorney-rachael-rollins/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Rachael Rollins</a>. But they also include chief prosecutors of smaller municipalities, like <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/crime/article211206354.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Satana Deberry</a>, who was elected district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina, in 2018, and <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/parisa-dehghani-tafti-prosecutor-arlington-virginia-primary-democrats_n_5cff25a7e4b06d839dc3f409" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Parisa Dehghani-Tafti</a>, the commonwealth’s attorney of Arlington County, Virginia, who won on a platform of ending mass incarceration in 2019.<figure class="align-center zoomable" style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative;"><figcaption style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px; cursor: default;"></figcaption></figure>These prosecutors are reinventing the role of the modern district attorney. Krasner, for example, <a href="https://krasnerforda.com/platform" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">campaigned on</a> eliminating cash bail, reining in police misconduct and upending a system of mass incarceration that disproportionately imprisons people of color. He won with <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Lawrence_Krasner" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">nearly 75% of the vote</a> in the general election.In 2018, before a packed lecture hall, Krasner <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfPSYQRHP9Y" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">told my law students</a> that ending racialized mass incarceration is “the most important civil rights issue of our time.” He pointed out that the key difference between a traditional prosecutor and progressive one is that the latter is a “prosecutor with compassion” and “a public defender with power.”This growing crop of “prosecutors with compassion” and “public defenders with power” has upended my own binary way of thinking about the role of the district attorney.I’ve realized that a district attorney can adopt a fundamentally different moral compass and conception of justice. While traditional “law and order” prosecutors possess a moral, legal and political compass that sharply distinguishes between victims and perpetrators, I’d argue that truly progressive prosecutors recognize that “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X17300611" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">hurt people hurt people</a>” and refuse to subordinate the values of restoration, rehabilitation and redemption to those of retribution, retaliation and revenge.These two sets of values can collide. Many entrenched judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, police unions and legislators have loudly opposed – or have actively resisted – this shift to restoration and redemption.Progressive prosecutors, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-08-02/once-tough-on-crime-prosecutors-now-push-progressive-reforms" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">according to U.S. Attorney General William Barr</a>, are “undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law.” In a December rally, President Trump <a href="https://www.phillyvoice.com/donald-trump-philadelphia-district-larry-krasner-worst-rally-hershey/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">singled out Krasner</a>, calling him “the worst district attorney,” one who “lets killers out almost immediately.”<figure class="align-center " style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative;"><figcaption style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px; cursor: default;"></figcaption></figure>The experience of Aramis Ayala, the state attorney for the 9th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, is a classic example of the obstacles these new prosecutors can face. After being <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-primary-state-attorney-judges-20160829-story.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">elected in 2016</a>, she announced that she would no longer seek the death penalty for any defendants tried by her office. Florida Gov. Rick Scott <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/03/death-penalty-reform-prosecutors/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">responded by reassigning 24 aggravated murder cases</a> to another state attorney who was amenable to the death penalty.Ayala sued to have the cases returned to her jurisdiction. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/01/547985395/after-losing-in-court-florida-anti-death-penalty-prosecutor-charts-way-forward" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">She lost</a>.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">What changed?</h2>Nonetheless, progressive prosecutors would have never attained power in the first place if their views didn’t resonate with voters.Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Jim_Crow.html?id=reDzBZ3pXqsC" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The New Jim Crow</a>,” deserves some credit for changing the way activists thought about crime and punishment. Alexander cast mass incarceration as a civil rights crisis by showing that people didn’t simply end up in jail because they were bad people who made poor choices. Nor did prison populations explode simply because there were more crimes being committed. Instead, mass incarceration was closely intertwined with race, poverty and government policy.Among civil rights activists, issues like affirmative action in higher education had been consuming a lot of time, energy and resources. Alexander’s book helped redirect attention to racialized mass incarceration as a main battlefront in U.S. race relations.Since its formation in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement has made criminal justice reform a centerpiece of their activism. In Los Angeles, for example, the local chapter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/jackie-lacey-george-gascon-district-attorney.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">has led weekly demonstrations for over two years</a> in front of the Hall of Justice. They’re protesting Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey for failing to adequately address police misconduct.Lacey, who is up for reelection, faces two opponents. Both of them – former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and former public defender Rachel Rossi – are running on progressive platforms.In March, we’ll see if the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office – the nation’s largest county-wide prosecutorial agency – will be the latest to join the progressive prosecutor movement.<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/stunning-report-reveals-that-nearly-5-million-americans-are-jailed-each-year/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/stunning-report-reveals-that-nearly-5-million-americans-are-jailed-each-year/</a>no lnx
Stunning report reveals that nearly 5 million Americans are jailed each year Written by Filter August 26, 2019BY RORY FLEMING At any given moment, there are roughly 600,000 people languishing in local American jails. About three-quarters of them have been merely accused of a crime, and only one-third of that 75 percent stand accused of a nominally violent act.That “snapshot” figure is a huge number of human beings. But with the transitory nature of jail populations, it still only represents a fraction of all those who have recently been incarcerated in local jails, or will be in the near future.For the first time, analysts with the Prison Policy Initiative, an influential nonprofit research and advocacy organization, have accomplished the monumental task of figuring out how many people are churning in and out of jail in an average year. Their conservative estimate is 4.9 million people.
That’s just under one in 50 adults in the US: millions who have likely lost jobs, missed childcare responsibilities and can’t even donate blood, often needlessly.
Other major findings from the Prison Policy Initiative’s report Arrest, Release, Repeat, published on August 26, will make anyone concerned with social and racial justice recoil in disgust.Included among the 4.9 million people calculated, 930,000 were arrested at least twice, and 430,000 were arrested three or more times. Of those arrested and booked into jail two or more times in a given year, 49 percent make under $10,000 a year, 52 percent have been diagnosed with a substance use disorder, and 27 percent have no health insurance. Black people constitute 13 percent of the US population, but 42 percent of those arrested and booked three or more times.Are many of the people who see the back of a cop car several times a year particularly dangerous? Hardly?; 88 percent of people booked multiple times had not been arrested for a serious violent offense.It is difficult to imagine how anyone could think this situation is acceptable (though of course, many powerful people do). So what can be done to address it?Graphic via Prison Policy InitiativeMany of Prison Policy Initiative’s suggestions involve diverting governmental funds away from law enforcement and toward making health and social services more available instead. This makes sense when, as we have seen, the people who are getting arrested most often are desperately poor and hurting.Unfortunately, the US political default is to not use government funds to help people, but to let charities and philanthropists decide who is worth helping instead. This is even true amongst politicians to the left of the US center, with the faked political consensus amongst 2020 presidential candidates ranging from Kamala Harris to Bernie Sanders around Medicare for All already collapsing.The report also recommends greater collaboration and cooperation of notes between legal, medical and social work professionals, and hints at the conceptualization of criminal justice as a service sector like health care or a public housing authority.The US criminal justice system does not operate as a service. It is not primarily concerned with serving as many people as possible to their satisfaction?—with restoring crime victims’ sense of safety or quality of life, for example.Instead, it operates more like a game. There’s an admission fee (court costs), so the system makes money every time it is played; it can also lose money when rules are broken (appeals and lawsuits). Prisons and jails cost a tremendous amount of money, but it is not the criminal justice system’s money. The costs of incarceration areexternalized to those who drive it: namely, police and prosecutors. These players in our game are concerned chiefly with racking up the “scores” that validate their work: arrests and convictions. [PERVERSE INCENTIVES?]Even the semantics of what we call our criminal justice offices reflect this. In England, the body that works to restrict people’s liberty is the Crown Prosecution Service. In France, that same body is the Public Prosecution Service. Our equivalent is the US Criminal Justice Division; or on the local level, often the District Attorney’s Office?—but never a service.This lack of higher values makes law enforcement is highly vulnerable to its weaponization by people of privilege wishing to cage their fellow humans as pests or nuisances. While there was volcanic social media outrage against “BBQ Becky,” who called the police on Black people for barbequing in a public space, few Americans are willing to scrutinize themselves for lesser, similar evils. Centrists of all stripes rehabilitate broken windows policing the moment they fear that their neighborhood is in decline, or just less fancy than they feel entitled to.The fact that our criminal justice system mainly exists to satisfy itself is consistently understood by only two political constituencies: progressives and libertarians, who both want the system shrunk as much as possible. While these groups’ reactions to the social conditions associated with more crime are starkly different, their shaky alliance is behind the push to consign many of the wins of last generation’s criminal justice reformers to the dustbin of our carceral history.Drug courts, a popular type of diversion, provide an illustrative example. The first drug court was created in Miami, Florida in 1989, and billed as a  humane way to help people overcoming addiction struggles and their families.Now that these courts are ubiquitous and institutionalized, they have been recognized as a cynical way to increase the dragnet of criminalization. Over 90 percent of people identified as having a “substance use disorder” do not want to stop using; drug courts coerce compliance under threat of jail, as reform organizations have highlighted.Such changes are reflected to a degree among some prosecutors. District Attorney John Creuzot of Dallas County, Texas, for example, was an old-school drug court-and-diversion aficionado back when he was a local judge.Since being elected as DA in 2018 and embracing the new reform crowd, Creuzot shifted, quickly learning that the best way of handling certain arguably problematic behaviors, like subsistence shoplifting and marijuana misdemeanors, is to take it out of the courthouse altogether. He now argues that arrests are in themselves enough to deter people from repeating these behaviors.However, a mere arrest gives a person a criminal record and an arrest leads to booking?, which means jail time before trial if someone is too poor to pay bail?—a scenario that helps to explain both the scale andthe economic-demographic breakdown of that huge number of people cycling through jails each year.Efforts like Creuzot’s cooperation with local judges to reform the bail system on a piecemeal basis may help make the jail population leaner.The other obvious thing he and other prosecutors could do is to prosecute less, adding more crimes to their non-prosecution pledges. Even then, however, many police officers would likely still arrest people because they can. That is what happened in Harris County (Houston) after DA Kim Ogg essentially decriminalized up to four ounces of marijuana.In the absence of wider changes to US political realities, perhaps the best way Creuzot and other reform DAs to move forward is to turn the tables and play hardball in their state legislatures.After Beto O’Rourke’s meteoric 2018 Senate run against Ted Cruz (R-Texas), pundits talked about how the down-ballot “Beto effect” gave huge payouts to local-level Democrats. What if O’Rourke, for example, were to team up with all the reform DAs in Texas?—Creuzot in Dallas, Ogg in Houston, Mark Gonzalez in Nueces County, Brian Middleton in Fort Bend County, and Joe Gonzales in Bexar County?—and tell any Democratic state representative that they get primaried in 2022, unless they co-sponsor a bill to make bail bonds illegal or marijuana legal?Those five DAs themselves represent over 10 million people. Even without Beto, they could and should be a major force, and one that could be replicated in many other states.If the elected prosecutors who dominate the criminal justice system are responsible for driving the misery and injustice that the Prison Policy Initiative’s report depicts, they, too, have the power to make immediate practical changes. They should also go beyond that to change state laws. But this will likely only happen with enough pressure from their constituents.==</div>