Date: 2024-05-18 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00019482 | |||||||||
The US Justice System | |||||||||
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Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | |||||||||
| Opinion FIXES Can Prosecutors Be Taught to Avoid Jail Sentences? At least 60 district attorneys have come to see incarceration as destructive, racist, expensive and ineffective. But can they persuade their own staffs? 122 Adam Foss, founder of Prosecutor Impact, a nonprofit group that helps prosecutors to shift their focus from incarceration to changing lives. Adam Foss, founder of Prosecutor Impact, a nonprofit group that helps prosecutors to shift their focus from incarceration to changing lives.Credit...Stephanie Zollshan/The Berkshire Eagle, via Associated Press Which part of the criminal justice system has most resisted change? Look out the window at the protests, and you might think it’s the police. But it’s prosecutors. Official guidance for federal prosecutors instructs them to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.” Local prosecutors, as well, often see their job as bringing the maximum possible charge. Some jurisdictions, however, have elected district attorneys who don’t want to lock people up just because they can. They see incarceration as destructive, racist, expensive and ineffective; 70 percent of former inmates return to prison, after all. “This wasn’t even on the radar until 2016,” said Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a network that brings progressive-minded prosecutors together and provides research, technical assistance and other help. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Now there are at least 60 such district attorneys. Prosecution has long been a white man’s job. The progressives are much more diverse. Many are Black women — including Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, Kim Foxx in Chicago and Rachael Rollins in Boston. They are also diverse geographically: Scott Colom and Shameca Collins in Mississippi and Mark Gonzalez in Texas work in rural areas that are strong for President Trump. And some, like Melissa Nelson in Jacksonville, Fla., and Tori Salazar in Stockton, Calif., are Republicans. They focus on diverting defendants who need help away from the justice system and into mental health care, job training or drug treatment. They decline to prosecute minor marijuana cases or crimes of poverty, such as nonpayment of traffic tickets or criminal trespass by the homeless. They do not ask for cash bail for minor crimes. Unlock more free articles. Create an account or log in These district attorneys try to do these things. But there’s resistance — most important, from their own staffs. “We hear prosecutors say a lot, ‘I’m not here to do social work,’” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, who leads justice reform work at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, one of the highest-profile progressives, took office as district attorney in January 2018. Three months later, 84 members of his staff had quit or been asked to resign. As with the police, the union has the strongest anti-reform voice. “If your motivation is to make the system more efficient, effective and fair, you will get tremendous support from your assistants,” said Duffie Stone, president of the National District Attorneys Association, essentially the union for prosecutors. “If your motivation is to destroy the system, you’re not going to see that. We’ve seen some assistants leaving newly elected prosecutors’ offices because the agenda was reform for the sake of dismantling.” “It’s great to have someone at the helm,” Ms. Eisen said. “But Krasner may be D.A. for four years. Career prosecutors are there for 20, 30 years. Something’s been missing from this movement.” Adam Foss, a former assistant district attorney, is trying to fill the gap. When Mr. Foss started as a prosecutor in Boston in 2008, he was trained in the law, but not the world he was stepping into. “I took a year of criminal law without hearing about poverty or racism,” he said. He gradually realized how a few days’ incarceration could change a life. “I knew that every young person I incarcerated was coming out worse on the other side,” he said. He began working with their families and community groups to find help for them instead. “We allow really young lawyers, who are very privileged, to go into communities that are desperately disinvested in, and make decisions about them,” Mr. Foss said. In 2016, he founded Prosecutor Impact, a nonprofit organization, to help those prosecutors do better. Zach Klein, the city attorney of Columbus, Ohio (his office handles misdemeanors and domestic violence), hosted a Prosecutor Impact workshop a year ago for his 150 staff members, paid for by local businesses and the Columbus Foundation. Mr. Klein emphasized that diversion doesn’t excuse crime. “There are still bad people,” he said. “But others just need a leg up. How do you use the criminal justice system to provide that leg up?” Well before the workshop, Mr. Klein had created an unusually comprehensive diversion program that asked people arrested for shoplifting 36 questions, such as, Are you eating? Do you have housing? “If food insecurity is the reason, then visiting a pantry is part of your diversion program,” he said. “To my knowledge, no one in the program has offended again.” He has recently expanded the list to cover other crimes. Prosecutor Impact’s philosophies were not new to Mr. Klein’s prosecutors. “My staff generally was open-minded,” he said. “But people who become prosecutors generally have a certain mind-set: Uphold the law and put people in jail. There was a little bit of skepticism about why we were taking two weeks to do this training.” Well-meaning prosecutors rely on incarceration for many reasons: Many are unaware of how the system criminalizes poverty and of the destruction wrought by a felony conviction. Those alternatives to prison? Many prosecutors don’t know any. And there is often no office procedure for diverting someone. Then there’s the gladiator culture. In most offices, prosecutors still win respect and promotions based on their courtroom victories. Prosecutor Impact’s training targets those problems. The four staff members who went to Columbus started by conducting long interviews with prosecutors to understand their goals and frustrations. They also met with community groups to learn about services they offered. Later, they brought prosecutors to those programs. The network also took the prosecutors to visit the Marion Correctional Institution — not for the standard walk-through with prison officials (Mr. Foss calls it the “see, it’s not so bad” tour), but to talk to prisoners about their lives. “A lot of people were moved by the prison visit,” Mr. Klein said. “Folks realized the impact on defendants and families, and the role prosecutors can play in changing the dynamics.” Mr. Klein’s staff also spent an afternoon in a poverty simulation run by Impact Community Action, a Columbus organization. It helps participants experience a month in the life of a low-income person. Each staff member was assigned the profile of someone living in poverty. In that role, they visited stations around the room: employer, utility company, pawnshop, grocery store, payday lender, child care facility. They faced problems: Do we skip paying the water or electricity bill? Seeing my probation officer requires taking three buses — I can’t make it after work. I’ve been fired because I missed three days while in jail, and with my criminal record, I can’t get another job. Prosecutor Impact also helped the office design systems for diversion and ways to encourage it. “Traditionally, we have rewarded trial lawyers who put really important domestic violence perpetrators behind bars,” Mr. Klein said. “But now with Prosecutor Impact we also celebrate creative disposition of cases.” Mr. Klein said the workshop helped him turn ideas, such as elimination of cash bail for certain offenses, into policies. Dietra Sherwin, a Columbus public defender, agreed. “Ever since the P.I. training, we’ve seen more willingness to offer diversion,” she said. “It’s not all about a 30th conviction for soliciting. They are having that conversation: ‘What can we do for this single mother to help her not be in this position?’” To receive alerts for Fixes columns, sign up here. Tina Rosenberg is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism” and is the author, most recently, of “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World” and the World War II spy story e-book “D for Deception.” The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. Editors’ Picks What Does Everyone See in Jesse Plemons? Jane Fonda, Intergalactic Eco-Warrior in a Red Coat Here Are 20 Shows to Watch This Fall Continue reading the main story | |||||||||