- Good afternoon everyone,
welcome to today's event hosted
by the Brennan Center for
Justice at NYU School of Law.
My name is Lauren-Brooke Eisen,
I'm senior fellow here
at the Brennan Center,
and your moderator for today's program.
The Brennan Center as many of you know
is a nonpartisan law and policy Institute
that works to reform and revitalize
our systems of democracy and justice.
You can keep up with our work
online at BrennanCenter.org,
follow us on Facebook and Twitter,
watch our videos on YouTube
and listen to our podcasts on iTunes.
And I believe today's
event will also be turned
into a podcast if you'd
like to listen to it again.
For decades prosecutors have
wielded tremendous power
and played a key role
in our justice system.
Recently, the role of prosecutors
has become a focus of
criminal justice reformers
who argue that to truly
reform and transform
today's criminal justice system,
prosecutors need to lead the change
to promote a more fair
and compassionate justice system for all.
To talk about this growing movement
for change in prosecution
we are thrilled that New York Times writer
And Truman Capote fellow
at Yale Law School,
along with as many of you know,
co-host of Slate's
Political Gabfest Podcast
that everyone at the
Brennan Center listens to.
Emily Bazelon discusses her new book,
"Charged: The New Movement to
Transform American Prosecution
"and End Mass Incarceration".
Emily mounts a major critique
of the American criminal justice system
and follows a new wave of prosecutors
who have been elected across the country.
In some of our biggest cities
and some of our most rural areas.
And these prosecutors are reinventing
how their jobs are done.
We are thrilled that
two veteran prosecutors
are here to join us today.
Both of these prosecutors are known
for their innovative
approaches and practices
to change culture from the inside.
Directly to my right is Eric Gonzales,
district attorney from
Kings County, New York,
better known as Brooklyn.
When he took office in 2017,
he became the first
Latino district attorney
in New York State leading one of
the largest prosecutors offices
in the country that serves more
than 2.5 million people
in Brooklyn, New York.
Two seats down,
we are joined by Dan Satterberg
who hails from the Pacific Northwest
and has been the King County
prosecutor since 2007.
His district includes the
city of Seattle, Washington
and employs more than 225 attorneys
who handle over 25,000 cases a year.
Immediately to Mr Satterberg's
right is Miriam Krinsky,
who was a former federal
prosecutor for 15 years
and is the current executive director
of an organization called
Fair and Just Prosecution
that seeks to train and nurture
a new generation of prosecutors.
Welcome to the Brennan Center for Justice.
(audience applauds)
And thank you again to
everyone on this panel
for taking the time out of your schedules
to discuss and share your experiences
about how to truly transform
prosecution in the 21st century.
And Emily, I want to start with you.
So everyone should join us in
congratulating Emily today,
as officially her book launched.
(audience applauds)
- [Emily] Thank you.
- And as Sydney noted when
she introduced the program
Emily's book will be for sale afterwards
and Emily will be signing
copies of the book.
- [Emily] Very happily.
- And Emily,
you so eloquently and grippingly
described in your book
why prosecutors play such
a pivotal role in the justice system.
And you also track this
movement to elect prosecutors
that really are trying to transform
the way that justice is
done in this country.
One's who are focused more broadly
about the scope of the prosecutors job.
Even focused on reducing the number
of people who are behind bars,
which is simply a 180
from what prosecutors
have been doing for
decades in this country.
You're a writer for the New York Times,
you could have written a book
about a lot of different things.
Why did you choose to
write about prosecutors
and this new movement to
elect reform-minded prosecutors?
- So first of all thank
you so much for coming,
it's really a pleasure for
me to see all of you out here
thinking about absorbing
the new conversation about these issues.
When I started thinking
about this book in 2015,
and when I wrote a proposal for this book,
I thought I was gonna be writing
about the power of prosecutors
and the damage that has done,
the way that prosecutors
had mostly use their power
to put more and more people in prison.
And I wrote a book proposal
that was an argument
about why that's been so problematic,
trying to show its development
looking at the legislative
shift to mandatory sentencing,
the rise of plea bargaining.
And then I had a really
happy coincidence happen
while I was working on the book,
which is that this movement
arose underneath my feet,
making the issue for me
as a journalist much more interesting,
because following change,
especially optimistic change,
is something that you don't get
to do all the time in my profession.
We spend a lot of time
talking about problems,
and we should,
and I should say there are
so many problems that
remain in criminal justice.
But to also be able to report
on people who are trying
to do things differently,
that has been the real
pleasure and joy of this book.
And so the stories I tell in a book
are designed to illustrate these two sides
of criminal justice in America.
I argue that we are at a crossroads.
And so I told a story about
an old school law and order
prosecutor in Memphis,
and then a story about Brooklyn
that features Eric Gonzales' office,
which is a way of looking
at these two different
ways of doing the job.
- And your storytelling device
in the book really pulls you in,
can you talk a little bit about
how you chose that
narrative to tell the story,
so a little bit more about
those two characters?
- Yeah sure.
So one of the characters,
the story in Memphis is about
a woman named Nora Jackson
who was charged with killing
her mother when she was 18,
that's now I think 12 years ago,
13 years ago.
So that is a story of a case in which
prosecutors decided very early
that Nora was the suspect,
the DNA results in the
case then came back,
excluded her,
the prosecution nonetheless continued
and it unfolds from there.
And I was interested in that case,
it's got a lot of gripping detail,
and Nora is to me a riveting person.
But also the office that
that case was prosecuted in in Memphis
has a pattern of failing
to disclose evidence
in murder cases where
the stakes are very high.
And I was just really surprised
as a citizen that that was possible,
that you could have repeated incidents
of prosecutorial misconduct,
serious violations of
people's constitutional rights
that would go unaddressed.
So that was a question I
went into with that case.
The second case I chose came out
of a specialized gun court in Brooklyn.
I was interested in a few things there,
this tension I think between
getting guns off the streets,
a goal that is hard to argue with.
And then the reality of having
mandatory prison sentences,
which is how New York law works
for people who get caught with a gun.
There are lots of reasons why,
people, especially in poorer
African-American neighborhoods
in Brooklyn have guns,
they talk about protection.
There are of course lots
of parts of the country
where the NRA is fighting hard
to protect peoples rights to have gun,
they were not showing up in Brooklyn.
And then I got really interested
in a divergent program
that Eric Gonzales' office
has been running for years
that is for people accused of felonies,
even violent felonies.
Because gun possession counts as
a violent felony in New York.
That's really unusual.
I still haven't found another program
like it around the country though,
I don't want to rule it out,
because it's a big America.
And so I watched,
I followed the story of a young man
who I called Kevin in the book,
because I'm protecting his
safety and his privacy.
I followed his case through,
and it was all happening in real time,
which was an exciting and also kind
of risky thing to do as a journalist,
you just don't know how
it's gonna turn out.
But I wanted to use his case
to illustrate both the possibility
of this harsh sentence,
and then the possibility
of a second chance
that he was receiving.
- So Eric, this program is in your office,
and you now oversee this program,
and you have also recently
just rolled out some very new initiatives
that I think district attorneys across
the country are following.
Your Justice 2020 initiative
has just stated publicly,
and I think you might be
the only prosecutors
office in the country,
correct me if I'm wrong,
that has said this,
but that alternatives to
incarceration are the default,
and incarceration will now be
the alternative in your office.
You have also recently ruled
out other new initiatives
such as hiring two
immigration attorneys on staff
who will look through cases for defendants
who might have collateral consequences
related to their immigration.
So these are really bold
really visionary changes.
Can you talk a little bit about
what some of the challenges have been
rolling out these initiatives
within your office,
and also out in the wider community?
- Good afternoon everyone.
It's a very broad question,
but my belief is that in order to keep
my county and to keep my city safe,
and particularly Brooklyn,
that the work we do as prosecutors
in order to promote safety
has to also really make sure that
we are earning community trust
in the things that we do.
And I've challenged the assistant DAs
to ask themselves two questions
on every case that they handle,
and really push back against
being case processors,
because an arrest has been
made by the police department
that we automatically have
to have certain outcomes with those cases.
And the two questions are very simple,
is what you're about
to do or trying to do,
is it gonna keep communities safe,
and will it promote or will
it push against public
trust in our justice system.
And quite frankly I've spent
nearly 24 years as a prosecutor.
I grew up in Brooklyn, I
grew up in East New York,
I think a lot of you if
you have read the book,
you may know that.
And I grew up in a community that was
a high crime neighborhood
during the 80s and 90s.
I am in a neighborhood where there was not
a lot of trust in our justice system.
And I became a prosecutor
to do two things,
to make sure people who
grew up in East New York
like my family could feel
some sense of safety,
but also because I thought
that maybe over time
people like myself could
help change the system.
And for me it's very clear,
our criminal justice system
has become too large,
it's overblown,
we take in cases all the time
that have nothing to
do with public safety.
We take in cases that actually
do the opposite of promoting public trust,
and we needed to focus our energies
on cases that actually keep us safe.
So I'm trying to shrink the system,
but I'm also doing something
that I think a lot of newer DAs agree,
which is it can't simply
be about punishment.
I've been talking to the
assistant DAs in my office
that accountability is not the same,
it's not synonymous with punishment.
But accountability is
about making sure people
take ownership for what they did wrong,
we try to figure out how to prevent
them from doing that again,
and they make some kind of redress
for the harm that they
cause to our society.
So this program deals with gun offenders,
and it's not very highly appreciated
by our police department
here in New York City.
- [Emily] Oh no, they love it.
(audience laughs)
- It's been a source of a lot
of tension between my
office and law enforcement,
but my thoughts on this are pretty simple,
that a lot of these young
men are arrested with guns,
they weren't using the guns,
they weren't committing crimes with guns,
but the fact that they had the gun
was a danger to the
community and to themselves,
so we needed to have
interventions in their lives,
but we did not to warehouse
them upstate for a minimum of 3 1/2 years,
especially the younger folks,
we deal from 16 to 24, 25 years old.
And really I have looked
at this for a while now,
I see wrap sheets every
single day of my life
where someone has been arrested for a gun
and goes upstate, comes
home and commits more crime.
So that sort of accountability
by sending someone to
prison didn't make us safer,
it just brought back more violent people.
Our interventions are meant
to do cognitive behavioral change
so that these young men will drop the gun
and lives the gun alone
and move on and be
productive with our lives.
It's a small sample,
but it's important that I'm doing it,
because it's proof that we
can in fact work with people
Who have been charged with violent crimes.
- And Emily, in your
book the character Kevin
is one of those people
who wasn't using the gone for a crime,
but likely just told the
place that that was his gun
because his friends had criminal records.
- Right, he was 19 at the time.
So he was in a friends apartment,
that friend had flashed this
gun on Facebook the day before,
that was why the police
had a search warrant.
Kevin happened to be the
one who opened the door
and the gun was lying
behind him on a table,
and he had this split-second,
he knew his friend who owned
the apartment had a record
and was really gonna be
going upstate for a long time
if he got caught.
And I think the rash
youthful impulsiveness to me
is captured in the fact that
one thought that flashed
through Kevin's mind
was that he could grab the gun
and flush it down the toilet.
Not gonna work.
But that was what he said he
was thinking in that moment.
And then once he had the gun he said
to the cops I'm gonna be
a man and take the charge.
And I think there's a lot there
about someone's conception of manhood,
and also this notion of
loyalty to his friends,
that he was trying to spare other people.
Now you can dismiss all this as misguided,
but I think a lot of teenagers,
my sons who are that age
might have a similar impulse
but in a different circumstance.
So anyway, that is the beginning
of that case, you're right.
- And Dan, you are also known
for some incredibly innovative
practices in your office,
specifically law enforcement
assisted diversion.
So for those less familiar
with it's called LEAD,
to those folks who aren't
familiar with the program,
you started one of those
programs in your office
and it's now considered a model
for police and prosecutors
across the country
and it's being expanded in New York
and in many other states.
Can you talk a little bit about
how you helped to start that program,
as well as any challenges that
existed when you are trying,
I'm sure you had no challenges,
when you tried to start the program?
- So thank you.
So I have been a prosecutor for 34 years,
I've been elected for the last 12,
so I'm not one of the new wave
he has run against an office,
I'm one of the old dogs.
And Miriam's group has brought
the old dogs and a new wave together.
And what I tell the
newly elected prosecutors
is that your discretion
is your superpower.
Prosecutorial discretion
can be a bad thing,
but it can also be something that you use
to engage with the community in new ways.
And I think the essence of
the 21st-century prosecutor
needs to be to do things on purpose
to bring the community into your work.
And the easy, in quotes,
the low hanging fruit for
criminal justice reform
has to be how we deal with drug addiction.
Because we all now say
that substance use disorder is a disease,
it's a brain disease,
people can be helped they can get better,
you can't punish people into sobriety,
but you can make a connection
with people in your community
who understand how to work with people
who are in the grips of addiction.
So a number of years ago,
and we were being sued
by the Public Defender
Association in my city.
We being the Seattle Police Department,
also my office because they
said that we were using,
the police were putting
their resources into areas
that particularly were
communities of color
making cases against mostly
black defendants in the city courts.
It was not unique to Seattle,
I think throughout the country
that's what was happening.
It was easier to go,
you could walk down the street with
a $20 bill in full police uniform
and you could probably make a buy,
because they were selling it to anybody.
What we did, we got sued
unsuccessfully over years,
and then one day we sat down in my office
and I said to the public defender
and the police chief who was there,
what do you guys want?
And they said,
we want the police to have another
option when they make an arrest,
and the police said, well
that's what we want too.
So soon we got some grant money
and we created this additional
tool for police officers.
When someone is arrested in Seattle
for drug possession or drug related crime
that the officer has the discretion
to call for a case manager instead.
Instead of taking that person to jail,
they might take him back
to the police precinct,
called the case manager,
and the deal is within an hour,
that case manager is gonna show up,
they're gonna do the warm handoff,
and if that person engages
with the case manager
then the prosecutor agrees
to never file that case.
And so the case manager
has to have some resources,
they have to have housing,
they have to have all sorts
of emergency medical things.
People who have serious drug addictions
often have other medical issues too.
So it's really a persuasive thing,
we don't force people into it,
it's a harm reduction
format, which is important,
because we know that harm
reduction is the thing that works.
What people become addicted to drugs lose
is any sort of connection
to friends and family
or people who want to help them,
and pretty soon they
just surround themselves
with other compulsive drug seekers.
So the idea of LEAD
it was to create that avenue
for help for people who have addictions.
Over the years, and we've
done it now for eight years,
and last year using my superpower
of prosecutorial discretion,
I said I'm not gonna prosecute people
who possess under a gram of heroin,
cocaine or methamphetamine.
It's just not doing anyone any good,
and instead we're gonna use the
money that we were spending,
about $3 million a year to process people
through the courts for no help.
We're gonna use that money instead
to continue to expand the LEAD program.
So that's an area where I
think we had to accept the fact
that there are inherent
limitations to the court system.
We have a drug court,
and our drug court is very successful,
it has 350 people in it,
but the people who are
in our drug court are
facing years in prison.
The people who were being picked
up for small possession cases
were facing days in jail,
and they weren't going into drug courts.
We had to find some other way
to use that arrest as
an intervention point,
so that people in the community
who know how to work with
people who are addicted
can have their role too.
So before that we said we got this,
the criminal justice system,
we got this drug thing.
Guess what, it didn't work out very well.
So this is the philosophy behind it
is to turn it over to people
who know what they're doing.
- And were you able to re-purpose
some of the prosecutors
in your office on
different types of cases?
- Well obviously we have serious
violent cases in Seattle too,
and that's what we want to spend our time,
and we are not drug counselors,
and so yeah, we don't
do those cases any more.
And again, the police
weren't super happy about it,
and there is a backlash of people
who say I've legalized heroin in Seattle
and everyone's gonna come to Seattle now
because we don't prosecute people.
We're not seeing that,
but what we are seeing is that through
intentional partnerships
with the community
that people are getting help
and they're getting better.
- And Miriam,
you have created this
ambitious national program
to help support newly elected,
and in Dan's words, old dogs as well.
Reform-minded prosecutors,
prosecutors who are hoping to really shift
the way that justice is
done in their offices.
And you and I worked together,
the Brennan Center worked with
Fair and Just Prosecution,
and I've never asked you, I'm curious,
how did you know that
there was such a need?
- I don't know that we did know.
I think that our feeling was,
Let's fill a space that looks like
and feels like it needs to be filled,
and let's see how it goes.
And we really saw this opportunity
and a moment that was a unique moment
with individuals like Eric,
DA Santana Deberry from Durham
is here just recently elected,
and she came in more recently.
But when we looked around in 2016
and saw the individuals
who had come into office
and knew full well just how lonely
and challenging the job can be,
the change is never easy.
That cultures in offices run deep,
and that it's not easy to do
things in a different manner.
And as Eric said earlier,
and his Dan has been doing for some time
to commit to shrinking the
size of the justice system,
to commit to a view that
we have criminalized
too much for too long.
That we have got a justice
system that for too long
has tried to treat through imprisonment
and through punitive responses individuals
who are suffering from
substance use disorder,
who are struggling with mental illness,
who are simply reflecting the
manifestations of poverty.
That individuals who are
really trying to take to heart,
how do we change that paradigm,
how do we own as prosecutors,
as Dan so passionately
talked to our group about,
how do we own more,
really from cradle to grave
in terms of the persons life.
And say that the job of
prosecutors should be
to create healthy and safe communities,
we can over-police our
way to safer communities,
but how do prosecutors own the need
to make their communities
healthier places.
So when we started to hear these views,
we realized that this was
a different moment in time
and that somehow we needed a space
where these bold new
thinkers could come together
and feel that they have a community
and that they weren't alone,
that they could come together
and share the challenges,
the struggles and also share new ideas
and have a chance to
learn from each other,
and to learn from some
of the best expert
thinkers in the country.
So I think our view was,
let's see what this looks
like and feels like.
And after the first meeting
where we brought these folks together
a number of them came back and said,
please don't stop, let's keep this going,
we need that community,
we need that place where we can safely
talk through and support each other,
and we need a group that's
gonna be there to lift us up.
And also come in as firefighters
when things start to
blaze in our community,
because not everyone is gonna agree
with this new thinking that
we're bringing to the mix.
- And Emily in your book you write
that New York Times journalist
Claudia Berman noted
that these DA candidates,
and I'm quoting from his
article in your book,
sound like they're running
for public defender not prosecutor.
And that really struck me as a reader.
This is a marked shift from
the punitive criminal justice
tough on crime rhetoric,
there was this phrase,
you couldn't run for
dog catcher for decades
unless you were tough on crime.
And now we have the highest
law enforcement officials
running on an empathetic
smart on crime platform,
which is very, very new in
the history of our country.
What do you think about his quote,
and do you think that really reflects
what's been happening in the movement?
- I don't think it really
reflects what's happening
but I think that assumption
is quite revealing,
that if you position yourself
as trying to redefine what safety means,
When Eric is talking about
this, that's what I hear.
Law and order DA's would also say
that safety was also their priority,
but they think the way to get
to safety is strict punishment,
which often means imprisonment.
And that's their job is to lock
people up who do bad things.
When crime was very high
most of the country was very receptive
and committed to that message.
So now crime is down,
and that opens the space to
think about it differently.
And you can start to ask questions,
like wait a second,
the rate in the United States
for solving murders is 60%.
That's low compared to
other Western democracies.
So maybe safety involves the kind of trust
That Eric and Dan and other folks
here are trying to build
in their communities,
because people trust the laws
and they see it as a legitimate.
They see the criminal justice system
as having a purpose that can support
their lives and communities,
well maybe they'll go to the
cops when they see a crime,
maybe they'll show up
as witnesses in court.
Problem is there are these gaps
that their lack of desire to do that
creates in solving cases
and solving homicides and shootings.
So I think that redefinition
of safety is crucial.
You see from this idea
that if you have that goal
that you are acting
like a public defender.
That suggests that prosecutors
can also share those values.
And I think what you're
seeing from this movement
is a real pushing back.
And I think also it's so
important to give credit
to the organizers who
helped this movement grow
and have been so much
behind these campaigns.
Because they're making DA's answer
to a different constituency,
and that makes all the difference.
It turns out these are local elections,
not all that many people vote.
You can make a big impact
on your local criminal justice system
without having to address
gridlock in Washington,
or these big insoluble feeling
national problems that we have.
- And in Emily's book she writes,
the culture of a DA's office,
more than a longevity in the job,
shapes whether conviction
psychology takes hold.
And that really resonated with me,
and I know that this is something
that Fair and Just
Prosecution is working on,
which is really how you
change culture in offices.
Both of you, Eric and Dan,
run very large offices with
a large number of staff,
attorneys, administrative staff.
Eric, I'll turn to you first,
for decades prosecutors across the country
really have been rewarded
for conviction rates.
for more punitive responses to crime.
They've been promoted,
chief prosecutors have been elected
based on their conviction rates.
And things are changing,
and both of you are doing things
to change that in your offices.
So Eric, what have you started to do
to change the culture in
your office around promotion,
and just really the culture
around punitive responses
and what a DA's job and what
their role should really be?
- So in order to change culture,
and I have a big office,
1100 plus employees,
over 500 prosecutors.
Some are junior, some have
been there for a decade,
some have been there for 25 or 30 years.
To change that culture is not
going to happen overnight.
But one of the things
that I think has been
a key part of the cultural
change in the office,
the way we hire is different,
the kind of questions
we ask when we're hiring
is a lot different than it used to be.
We used to hire people who
wanted to be tough on crime
and people who wanted to be
the best trial attorneys.
And that's really what their goal was,
to get into the court room
and learnt how to try cases,
as opposed to people who we now speak to
who what to do justice on cases
and understand it's a different obligation
than just going into the court room
and proving your mettle
against an adversary.
But for me I think the most
profound change in my office
is the acknowledgement that jail
or prison doesn't keep us safer.
That if we want prosecutors
not to be so punitive,
because we are always gonna
get slapped down by news media
or some other person who
wants us to be very vindictive
and harsh sentences and very
tough on our recommendations,
that we actually have to
have a fundamental belief
within the people who are doing the job,
that when we send someone to prison
it's because we are failing.
Because we can't figure out another way
of safely dealing with that person.
And we're saying the only response
is to send them up state where possibly
they could have some long-term
cognitive change in their behavior.
But we believe the
things that keep us safe
are educational attainment and housing
and unemployment and a real bond and a tie
to a person, a spouse, a
partner, a family member.
When we incarcerate people,
we remove them from
those things that we know
keep people safe,
and we go back and forth and
we do that over and over,
and then we expect them to become better.
So we really need to use our resources
as Miriam was saying,
to make the community stronger
and better and healthier
and not to put people in situations
whereby punishing them
We've now returned them
back to the community worse.
And we can all talk about our situations
with our jails and whatever we come from.
Jails are not the place where
you're gonna make
positive social networks.
And people come back from jail
worse than when we sent them.
But they also come back to a community
that has all the same problems it had
when they first got in trouble.
And we have not invested in either
the person or the community,
so we're setting them up for failure.
I saw this first hand in East New York,
I saw this with so many of my friends
who I went to school with.
So many of my friends in the 80s and 90s,
particularly in the 90s,
got involved with drugs,
and my family still
lives in East New York,
when I return home to my family home,
I still see these guys,
they've never moved on with their lives,
because their educational
attainment was cut short,
they could never get good jobs,
and we've stunted their growth,
and we lost generations of young people
to a criminal justice
system that kept saying,
you're not changing so we're
just gonna give you more and more time,
instead of giving them the
ability to make that change.
- And Dan,
you've also done a lot
to try to change culture
and practice in your office.
I know that you have brought
in cultural competency trainings,
implicit bias trainings,
you brought in speakers can talk about
the racial history of our country.
I was an assistant DA here in New York
and I never had that sort of training,
or speakers brought in,
or implicit bias training.
Can you tell us a little bit
about why it's so important
to change culture in your
office and what you've seen?
- So number one, human beings hate change,
it makes them very uncomfortable.
And lawyers probably more than anyone.
So we are taught in wonderful
institutions like this
all about precedent,
and about things that
have already been decided,
so let's move on.
That's of course not true at all,
and in fact we have tremendous ability
to change our practice and our culture.
But the first thing I wanted to do
was to just understand what the criticisms
are of our profession
and to invite them into our conversation.
So we talk about mass imprisonment,
mass incarceration in the United States,
and how even though right now
we have the crime rate that
we had in the mid-1960s,
which we haven't been
this safe for 50 years,
we lead the planet in incarceration.
In fact, if we were gonna go back
to the incarceration
rate that we had in 1965,
we'd have to release 80% of the people
who are in state and local prisons.
And no one wants to do that,
but we also have to understand
it wasn't always this way,
we had a different approach.
We bring in speakers,
I'm even letting Emily talk to my office,
and I haven't even read the book yet,
I know there's gonna be
some criticisms in there.
But we are grown-ups and we
can handle a little criticism,
and if it's true we deserve the scrutiny,
because we have a lot of power
and we have to understand why people
want us to change and understand it.
And certainly racial justice
is a big part of that,
and I've had mandatory
trainings for my entire staff,
and made him watch the 13th documentary,
which was very powerful
and brought Jeff Robinson
from the ACLU into talk about,
he's got a wonderful 3 1/2 hour talk
about the true history of racial justice
that you didn't learn in
high school or college.
And it's made people uncomfortable,
and I've had some backlash,
and I've told my people
who are uncomfortable,
that means you're paying attention,
if you're uncomfortable
that means this is working.
So let's start to look
at some of our practices
and I agree with Eric
and the idea of shrinking
our footprint in the
criminal justice system.
We don't have to be involved
in all of these things.
So I hire and promote people who want
to be part of changing things
and who have creative ideas.
And because of those
ideas we're doing things
in a much different way.
And the best ideas come from within.
My ideas are always brilliant,
but the ones that stick
and are sustainable
and people are encouraged to come and say,
you know we do this kind of case
but it really isn't helping.
So because of those things,
for instance we don't prosecute people
who have suspended licenses
because they didn't pay
their speeding ticket,
driving while license
suspended in the 3rd degree.
Once someone goes from a civil infraction
to a criminal matter,
and once you get into that
vortex you never get out.
Being in court doesn't help
people get their licenses back,
we do have a way to help people
who are motivated to do it.
So that was about 3000 cases
a year that we no longer do.
We no longer do about a thousand
drug possession cases that we used to do.
And instead were trying to use
those resources to do things like,
we have a brand-new unit in my office
the takes guns out of peoples homes
in domestic violence situations.
So when a domestic violence victim
gets a civil protection order,
or there is a criminal no contact order
we actually have a unit,
full-time 12 people,
who go in with police
and execute those orders
with extreme risk protection
law in our state as well.
So we are taking cases,
people that used to do
these meaningless cases,
and we're doing something
that I know is saving lives.
Last year we took over 600
guns out of peoples homes
at the time when they were
in the most dangerous
domestic violence situations,
or when someone was suicidal,
we were giving effect to that law.
So I'd much rather use my
resources to help prevent violence
than to respond to crimes
of poverty or addiction.
- And I'd like to add,
because when I think about the
culture change in the office
and why it's so difficult.
It's not because there are
bad people in the office.
There are people who
have committed themselves
to try to keep their community safe.
But it's an acknowledgement
that the things
that they personally did over time
have added to community harm.
That the things that they have done
on behalf of all of you
and on behalf of the people that we serve
have actually caused harm.
And I think it's a difficult
acknowledgement to make
That you have done something
that you thought was the right thing,
or the thing that you were told to do,
or the thing that you were trained to do,
and now when you have to reassess
you realize that you have added to harm.
And I've come to terms with my own career
with the things that I've
done that have harmed.
I've tried drug cases,
cases that we don't even
prosecute any more in my office,
but I've tried cases that
people have gone to prison for
for things that I would
never even pursue today.
So that is one of the biggest
I think resistance points in
district attorneys offices,
that you have career prosecutors
who are committed to victims.
And in my office I hear
them talk about victims,
and protecting victims every day,
but understanding that the acts
that we have taken on
behalf of our community
have actually sent us to this place
where we have mass incarceration
and we have mass supervision,
and we have a lack of trust
in our justice system.
- And Miriam, your group,
Fair and Just Prosecution
does a lot to promote culture change,
in district attorneys offices,
and recently a plug for all of our work.
FJP and the Justice Collaborative
and Emily Bazelon
collaborated on a document
that Miriam is holding in her lap called,
"21 Principles for the
21st Century Prosecutor".
That is a blueprint
for starting to change
culture in these offices.
Can you talk a little bit
about some of those principles,
and they're also incorporated
in Emily's book at the very end as well.
- Sure, and Brennan Center and LB
were also a partner in crafting that.
So I think Emily in
introducing it in the book,
because it is at the end of the book
said that this started
with a cup of coffee,
and it actually did.
I think Emily and I were sitting together
and after hearing and
having heard over the months
about the great work that Emily was doing,
I think I looked at her and said,
"What are you doing with all
"this knowledge that you are acquiring?"
And I think Emily looked at me
as if I was a bit of a space alien
and said, "I'm writing a book,
"what have we been talking about?"
And I said, "No Emily,
"the book is gonna aptly
describe the problems
"and look for some models,
"but what are we doing to create a vision
"and roadmap for the solution
"for where we want to see this field go?"
And that was where the
21 principles came from.
I think Emily said, "What do
you want me to do about it?"
And I said, "Let's try
to answer the questions
"that I guess get asked
time and time again,
"which is, what is a
progressive prosecutor"
"when we talk about this
21st century prosecutor?"
Rather than just pointing and saying,
well there's Dan and there's
Eric and there's Santana
and there's a host of others,
what do we really mean in terms of
that blueprint that a newly elected
prosecutor could grab and say,
if I really want to think
about doing it right,
what does it look like?
So we worked over many months
and got input from Dan and Eric
And a cast of many others that I know
with some of my staff there
started driving them crazy,
Are you giving it to one
more person for input.
And we tried to define the roadmap
that is predicated on two pillars.
One is, how do we reduce the size
and the footprint of the justice system,
as both Dan and Eric have alluded to.
So what are a series of principles
and strategies that are
gonna shrink the system.
And second of all,
how do we try to increase fairness,
how do we create a system
that is accountable,
that is transparent,
that embraces procedural justice.
And what does that look like?
And how do we get
prosecutors to understand,
as Emily talks about and others so well,
that compassion and
mercy and a just system
is not inconsistent with public safety
in fact it's the essence of public safety.
So the principles include and getting
them down to 21 took a
little bit of discipline,
I think we started in the high 40s.
And some of them got combined together,
but it includes things like principles
around how do we treat kids like kids,
and realize that young
people remain stupid
with developing brains into their 20s.
No aspersions cast on those
in the room in their 20s,
but how do we have a system
that acknowledges that building brain?
How do we embrace thinking
around treating rather
than criminalizing individuals
who are struggling with mental illness,
with substance use disorder, with poverty?
How do we develop principles
that recognize the poverty penalty,
meaning reforming cash
bail, ending fines and fees.
How do we think about what it
looks like to have a system
where incarceration is the alternative
rather than the
presumptive starting point.
How do we do what Dan has
done in Washington State,
which is seek to end the death penalty
and recognize that's not our vision,
and shouldn't be a just system
that we are trying to perpetuate.
And how do we think about those pillars
around accountability and transparency?
So we've tried to put it out there,
we've tried to give concrete examples
with every principle
of where in the country
you can see something that
looks like this principle,
with the hope that eventually
this is the finish line
that we're moving toward.
- And I have a question
for all the panelists,
I'm gonna ask Emily to answer
it first if she doesn't mind.
So the Brennan Center
recently hosted an event
with James Foreman Jr., Rachel Bercow
and Paul Butler from Georgetown,
and we discussed the criminal
justice reform movement,
and we discussed prosecutors.
And both of them spoke about this article
that Emily also writes about in her book.
And it was written in 2001 by Abby Smith,
who was the co-director of
the Criminal Defense Clinic
at Georgetown Law.
I was a student in the
clinic at the time actually,
and I was thinking about
going to a prosecutors office,
and the title of her article was,
Can You Be a Good Person
and a Good Prosecutor?
- [Emily] And her answer was no.
- And her answer was no,
it was very controversial at the time,
and Abby talks about
how career prosecutors,
friends of hers,
were just horrified that she would
write such an article
and answer it that way.
And since then Georgetown
law professor Paul Butler
has dedicated an entire chapter
of his 2009 book,
"Let's Get Free, a Hip-Hop
Theory of Justice".
10 years later, Emily writes
about this in her book as well.
And you've just spent the last few years
deeply entrenched in prosecutors
offices in this movement
interviewing defendants,
interviewing family members,
interviewing so many people touched by,
not only prosecutors offices,
but the entire spectrum
of the justice system.
So I'm curious what do you think?
- So I love Abby, and I love Paul Butler,
and I think their deep skepticism
is actually really useful and important.
You have to understand if you
look at the country as a whole
how unusual these folks are.
There are more than 2400 elected
prosecutors across the country,
there are just, it depends how you count,
but there are not very many people
who can lay claim to being
a progressive prosecutor.
There are five district
attorneys in New York City,
I would argue that none of the other
four are meeting that definition.
So what you see from
people like Paul and Abby
is a sense of, prosecutors
are gonna prosecute,
and if you don't want to be locking up
a lot of low income
black and brown people,
this is not the job for you.
I've talked with Paul and Abby recently,
I keep checking in with them,
like have you changed your mind.
Because I tell my law students
I think it's really important
for ethical committed people
to be on both sides of
the adversarial system.
If we give up on sending people
to Dan and Eric's offices
because we don't think that progressives
or liberals should be playing that role,
that's a lot of power
to hand off to people
who you may not agree with.
I don't think they've really
completely change their minds,
and so I think this is just
this fundamental tension.
Is this model gonna prove out.
Dan is especially unusual
because he's been in office for 12 years.
But most of these folks just
got elected the day before yesterday.
Kind of useful for my book,
the movement is so young
it hasn't screwed up yet.
But it could prove a disappointment,
it could prove to produce
very incremental change.
Think about the 80% number
that Dan was talking about,
or even 50, which is a slogan
in the criminal justice reform movement.
We are very far from those outcomes.
And so I think again,
the sense that there are
people who are gonna be holding
the feet to the fire of elected officials
who are making different
claims and making sure
that this idea of a progressive prosecutor
doesn't get diluted.
There have been other
people in years previous
who claim to be doing
something kind of different
and then didn't really follow through.
So I think when you talk to
people like Abby and Paul,
they're saying, prove it
to me, I want to see it,
I'm not sure I see it yet.
- And so Eric and Dan, I'm curious,
why should good people be prosecutors?
- Well I'm going to say I believe
that they're simply wrong.
(audience laughs)
I think that as a prosecutor
we have to do a much better job
in acknowledging that the
criminal justice system
the origins, the systemic racism
that it was used to hold people back.
We have to make acknowledgements
of how the system has failed us,
and how it's particularly been used
to hold back African Americans
and others in this country.
That being said,
prosecutors play an important role
in helping I think shape what
could be safe communities.
And the things that we are doing
to talk about mental health
and to treat addiction in
different ways and to do that.
And I've seen the change,
I remember when Professor
Butler wrote his book,
I remember during that period of time
how difficult it was to
get the best law students
from around the country
to apply to DA offices
because that sentiment was so real,
but it's changing.
And as people have seen what DA's
are doing throughout the country,
even if it's only small places,
even if it's not numerically
a large number of places,
it's been in pretty big offices
where they can effect massive change.
We are seeing some of
the best and brightest
and most committed law students
now applying to our offices.
So I think good people can be prosecutors.
I think we want them to continue to feel
that they can make systemic change
if they come into the office,
and that they're not just case processors,
but they're actually given real discretion
in how to effectuate justice.
And for me, like Dan, we're different,
because we were not part of outsiders
who were elected to transform an office,
both of us were insiders who knew
that there could be a better
way to run our offices
and to do a better job.
So I think there's a lot of hope
There's gonna be a lot of opportunities
for people who come from
the defense perspective
or who come from other
perspectives to change offices.
But I bet you in virtually
every DA's office in the country
there are people in there
who would love to change the
way their office operates.
- I'd say it isn't a matter
of good person or evil person,
it's really about arrogance or humility.
And I've certainly met prosecutors
who I thought were very arrogant,
and would not admit the
inherent limitations
of what they can do to help
people who are struggling
with parts of the human condition.
We have our mission statement
includes the line that
we exercise our power
with humility and fairness.
And humility, that was the word chosen
by the people in my office,
and I thought that's refreshing,
and it's something that
we remind ourselves,
we don't have the answer to everything.
The answer to everything can't
be a long prison sentence.
Now it is in certain cases,
you commit a serious violent crime,
you kill people, you shoot people,
you're gonna face one
of our trial prosecutors
and they're not gonna apologize
for sending you to prison.
But for so many of the
complicated social problems
that come to our office,
they don't come to us because
we're the best option,
they come to us because
we're the only option.
The essence of criminal justice reform
is to envision something that's not there
and to build something that's not there
and to do that in partnership
and in a sustainable way.
To build the LEAD program
took us many years
to get the money,
it continues to be a
struggle to get the money
that we need to build that
thing that isn't there.
So the humility that's required
to be an effective leader,
an effective prosecutor,
it starts with acknowledging
that the stuff that comes to us
just comes to us because
we have already been built.
And the things that would
be more effective solution
haven't been built yet,
but they could be,
and there is a community out there waiting
to partner with you to do that.
That's why I think also the pace
of criminal justice reform
is frustratingly slow,
because building those
things up it takes time.
- We're sitting here at NYU Law,
I see some first-year
law students in the room,
some second years, some third years.
So a lot of the students
sitting here are thinking,
should I join a prosecutors office,
should I join a public defenders office?
- Yes.
(audience laughs)
- And Miriam I know that your organization
is starting to think about how to work
with law students as they
make those tough decisions.
Can you talk a little bit about
what you tell them and some
of the work that you're doing
as they start to think through,
how do I want to spend my career?
- Sure.
And I think there may even be some
of our summer fellows in the room.
Can you raise your hand if
you're one of our summer fellows?
I think they're out there,
they're probably just being shy.
So they're probably together over there,
just they all said you raise your hand,
so at least one of you did.
So we are very much
trying to embrace the view
that we have got to bring
about change from the top down,
but it's only gonna be sustained
if we also carry forward
and bring about that change
from the bottom up,
and then try to really break down
the middle level management
that can often be resistant
to cultural change.
So I'm gonna in a rare moment
disagree with just one
small thing Emily you said,
which is we actually are
going into law schools
and trying to say to students there
if you don't enjoy locking people up,
especially young people of color you need
to be in a prosecutors office,
because every decision
that a prosecutor next
to take away somebody's
liberty should really hurt,
and should be difficult and
should keep you awake at night,
and should cause you to want
to bring a new vision to your job.
And if we're going into law
schools and pitching this,
if you think you want
to be a public defender,
that would be great,
but we had also love to see
you in a prosecutors office.
Because we somehow need
to break down this notion
that this is an adversarial process,
where both sides are
pitted against each other,
and instead embrace the view that we're
jointly seeking the
pursuit of a just result.
And we need to join forces to try
to bring about changes
to the justice system.
So through our Summer Fellows Program,
through other efforts,
we're really trying to break
down that starting point
and to look for individuals who recognize
as Eric and Dan have articulated
that we shouldn't be defining people
by the worst thing that they've done,
we really need to try
to stay more proximate
to those who come into the justice system
and look for the humanity
in every individual,
and try to find what is the pathway
that's gonna be right for them
and right for the community,
while realizing that
prison is rarely going
to answer that question in the affirmative
in both of those instances.
So we are trying to find those individuals
and encourage them to make
their way into offices
like this and it may be that
they're now small in number,
but they're growing,
and they're growing in urban areas
in other parts of the country
were criminal justice reform
hasn't necessarily been the norm.
And I really think that we are looking
at a new normal in the field
that is only gonna grow
larger as time goes on.
- And an important component
to all of this change
is offering the public another answer,
than when you've been a victim of a crime
that the only thing the government
can do is to lock somebody up.
I'm not gonna get into too
much of this right now,
but it is more and more apparent to me
that if we gave victims and survivors
of crimes other options
that they would choose
incarceration less and less
in a lot of cases that right now
the only solution we give them
is a sense that if we take it seriously
only if the person went to jail.
- And Emily, I'm gonna end
my last question with you.
The book is so compelling
because you trace the journey
that two different characters
take through the justice system.
Vastly different journeys,
vastly different jurisdictions.
One in Brooklyn, one in Tennessee,
and they were treated quite differently
by their prosecutors offices.
This storytelling device really,
really I think drives home
more than anything I've ever read
why a prosecutors discretion
and power is so important.
Can you talk a little bit,
I know the word mercy comes
up in your book a lot,
can you talk about that,
and why prosecutors have
this potential to grant mercy
in a way that very few
other public actors do?
- Well because we have
given them this role
where their discretion is
driving so many decisions.
And I thank you,
that was my goal for my book,
I care a lot about storytelling,
that's what I can bring,
I'm a journalist, that's what
I'm supposed to be good at.
(audience laughs)
So that was definitely the idea.
When you spend time with people
who are caught up in the
criminal justice system
you start to see it from
their point of view,
that is also part of my job.
And I think this idea that
people deserve second chances,
which is a bipartisan very mainstream idea
which I see gaining ground
all over the country.
Florida restores the vote to
formerly incarcerated people
by 66% of the vote in Florida in November
it's an idea that has
religious underpinnings,
it has a lot of moral force behind it,
and I think it's strong enough
to counter this impulse that
we had in the 80s and 90s
that we had to protect
ourselves by separating people,
and essentially locking them up
and pretending that we
could throw away the key.
That's wrong,
almost everyone who goes to
jail and prison comes home.
So thinking about the effects
that incarceration has on them
is crucial for the
community and for all of us.
So thank you,
I hope that the stories
of the people in my book
just allowed some of us who don't
have these experiences ourselves
to think through their
experiences a little
and see the world through their eyes
and imagine the power of second chances
from their point of view.
- Now we have time for audience questions.
We have two mics
that are being set up right now.
Please step forward,
we would love to hear from our audience.
Step up to the mic,
please tell us your name,
please do ask a question,
I know there are a lot
of lawyers in the room,
please ask a one part question.
Please do your best, I know you can.
So we'll start over here.
- Hello there.
Is this working?
I'm an attorney at Public Rights Project,
which I think some of you may know,
I know Miriam knows our founder.
And we do work with civil
and criminal prosecutors
on thinking about how these offices
can be protecting public rights,
civil rights, consumer
protection, workers rights.
And so loaded question is,
what do you think about
your roles in your offices.
So I guess for Eric and Dan
of prosecutors protecting the
rights of vulnerable people,
whether it's going
after wage theft claims,
or other corporate crimes.
Because I think under-enforcement in some
of these communities is also one
of the sources of the problems,
and I know that Emily has spoken to trust,
and is that a component
that you're thinking about,
about building trust
with your communities?
- So absolutely,
it's something that I talk about
all the time when I'm in Brooklyn.
I talk about using the
resources of the office,
as we are making our footprint small
in the criminal justice system
by using it in ways that
actually protect the public.
In terms of treating workers with dignity,
making sure that people are
taking advantage of workers.
And also using our
resources to prosecute cases
that have gone under-prosecuted,
in communities of color in particular
there is a sense that law
enforcement does not care about
communities of color when
they're victims of crime.
So not only are we making
sure that we are being fair
on the cases we prosecute
but that we actually have
the resources to protect
vulnerable populations
and prosecute cases that in the past
may have been ignored
or under-investigated.
About a year ago,
maybe a little bit more than a year ago
I created a cold case unit in my office
using resources,
there were no added
resources given to my office,
but since then we have helped solve
with the police department
six cold case homicides,
one was a couple of months ago,
there was a young woman who had been raped
and shot and killed in
Brownsville on a rooftop in 1992,
we had the evidence to
investigate that case
but it had gone ignored,
because she didn't have someone
really speaking up for her.
And using the resources that we are saving
to protect the vulnerable population.
So yes and yes.
- Did you want to answer?
- I would just say very quickly
that the most vulnerable
and marginalized people
in our society come
to us with the label crime victim.
Now I also know that many
people who are crime victims
have also been perpetrators of crime,
have also been, it's not
an easy one size fits
all little box that
you are a crime victim.
I want to see going forward,
and this is just a vision,
why can't we use that interaction
with the criminal justice system
as a place to provide the kinds
of support that we know people need.
If you've been the victim of crime
and your case is now in
the prosecutors office
why can't we have a navigator
who can help work with you
to get you stable housing,
maybe you need help with
substance use disorder
or behavioral health issues,
why can't we just use that
as an intervention point,
the way that we are now with
people who we're arresting.
The same services that
we are giving people
in our LEAD program and
in our other programs,
why can't we give those
to crime victims as well.
So I think it's an opportunity
for us to build some more trust,
and not just use victims to come in
and help us prove the case,
and then say goodbye see you later.
Because they're just as vulnerable
if not more so than they
were when they came to us.
So that's another principle
we could add to the list.
Let's make sure that we
treat people holistically
and give them the support
that they need when they
interact with our system.
- And we'll go to the second mic,
we have a really long line of
quite engaged listeners today,
so please remember to keep
your question to one part, thanks.
- And I am also a Mike, I'm Mike Dietrich
and I am actually running
for District Attorney in Rockland County,
open seat for the Serve
America Party, SA Party.
My question is not really a question.
- [Lauren] But you've
admitted it, so it's okay.
One part question.
- I do civil rights law,
I volunteered to represent
somebody that I've never met
in a prisoner abuse case.
And I just received from him
over the weekend, his story,
a letter about his background.
I couldn't put it down,
and I've never met the guy yet.
The question might be
whether anybody might want
to investigate this and
write a book about this guy.
But the bottom line is in reading this,
if what he says is true,
and I have no reason to doubt him,
because it sounds like he's owning
up to all sorts of things.
He didn't do any crime of violence,
no one ever hurt and no significant
amount of money ever stolen.
He robbed with a fake gun
a few fast food stores.
He is serving 52 years in prison.
And that was going in initially,
and then going out on
parole, violating parole,
going back for two years, in Alabama,
we read in the New York Times
about the conditions in Alabama,
it was so horrible for him
he was suicidal and decided to escape,
which he did without violence.
That added another 10 years.
And then he finally escaped again.
He ended up with no violence
and only minimal amount of property loss,
he's serving a total of,
a bunch of consecutive terms, 52 years.
And he seems like a decent guy
and he owns up to his misdeeds.
And the question would be,
I don't see any remedy the parole board,
but this is something I think
our society needs to address,
he's in prison for the
whole of his life basically
for doing stuff as a young man,
and then doing reasonable other things,
and that's not a question,
just a statement.
- I'll just say most prosecutors
will hate this answer,
but I'm gonna give you
the answer that I like.
I think there should be a mechanism
for a second look for
excessive sentencing.
Right now we have clemency,
which is slow, its political.
- Tiny.
- Nothing in it for the governor.
But I've brought 21
clemency cases in my office
to governors, supported
the release of people
who I thought had been
given excessive sentencing.
Sometimes you can find a legal hook
to go back to the court and do that,
but we shouldn't have to
be inventing those things,
and I think we should not be
afraid to go back and look
at some sentences that people are serving.
Because if you've been
doing this job long enough
you know what is within
the range of reasonable,
and then you know the things
that shock the conscience.
We just need to create some ability
to go back and look at these sentences,
and what that looks like I'm not sure yet.
- So let me briefly add,
so FJP is actually
bringing the prosecutors
we work with together later this year
to have a conversation around
how do we dispense justice,
not simply prospectively,
but also how do we correct past injustices
in a way that Dan did,
in a way that Eric is looking at,
and a few of the other
DA's that we work with.
I think that we really
need to own the injustices
of those who are serving
decades behind bars
and look for whatever vehicle we can find,
which might also include
legislative change,
as recently happened in California,
to try to unlock our prison doors
and enable those who no longer pose
a danger to our community
who we are simply spending millions
of dollars paying to house
who can be safely back in our community
knowing that we are continuing to
do damage to their loved
ones and our community,
how can we figure out a way
to create those mechanisms.
- And a plug for a Brennan Center report,
we recently issued a report called
How Many Americans are
Unnecessarily Incarcerated?,
finding that almost 40% of
those people behind bars today
in state and federal prisons don't need
to be there if you look at public safety.
So that's just a look at public safety,
a very conservative estimate,
so we have a long way to go.
I'd love to take a question from here.
- So my name is Richard Barr,
and this is for District
Attorney Gonzales.
I think it's terrific that under you
and under your immediate
predecessor long-standing
unjust prosecutions that went through
the office in the Joe Hinds years,
and even earlier in the Liz Holsom years
have been re-examined
and that it's resulted
in the release from prison
of people who were unjustly convicted,
and if they had already been released
then having their records cleared.
And that's terrific.
And it seems to me though
that the exoneration of people
unjustly convicted is
one side of the coin.
The other side is the perpetrators
of the unjust convictions,
and it seems to me that,
and I'd like to know what
you have to say about this,
that rogue police
lieutenants like Luis Garcela
And rogue prosecutors
like Michael Vechioni
should have to be held
accountable for what they did,
and I'd like to know what
you think about that?
- The issue of accountability
is something that I support.
I have indicated that prosecutors should
not be beyond being held
accountable for bad acts.
In terms of any individual
person I'm not going to comment.
But we have taken a look at
some of our wrongful convictions
when we found malicious,
and what we believed would
be intentional wrongdoing,
whether or not any criminal charges apply.
The trouble with that,
and I think for all the
lawyers in the room,
know that these incidents
were 25 or 30 years ago,
the statutes of limitations have run,
I know that others have
given some thought about what
could be done on these cases.
But New York State has
a new prosecutorial misconduct commission,
and so we will see what happens
in the future with these things.
But it's something that my office spends
a lot of time thinking about,
what does accountability look like.
And I think for the first time
we just vacated our 25th
wrongful conviction,
we did something we haven't
done on the other 24,
which is we publicly issued a
report about what went wrong,
and we said it as it was.
So we are not sparing anyone's feelings,
the prosecutor was responsible,
whether the judge was
responsible, the defense attorney,
whoever the systematic players
were in these wrongful convictions,
we are looking to expose
that so that there
will be some transparency
and accountability in of itself,
and we are looking to see what we can do
with the other 24 cases
that are currently sealed.
But whether or not some kind
of general report can be issued
so that there can be a true accountability
for people's conduct and behavior.
For me it's also looking forward
to make sure that none of my prosecutors
ever make those mistakes again.
- Thank you, over here?
- I am Maria Roca,
I am a member of the Sunset
Park community since the 1960s
where we also saw very similar
unfolding of mis-justice
as did East New York.
So I'm here,
I'm very encouraged to see this level
of scholarship and intent.
In the interest of constructive justice
versus destructive justice,
which I'm sad to say I
witnessed personally.
I've found that the small neighborhood
all-volunteer organization
called Friends of Sunset Park,
when I after a brief absence
came back to Sunset Park
and saw that many things
were the same unfortunately.
Not for the better but for the worse.
And so in my work with young
people and their families,
the word keeps popping up,
life is not fair, it's not fair,
because that's how young
people often internalize.
And I'm addressing this
to the entire panel,
what are your offices or your work
doing to engage not only young people
at the middle school
and high school level,
but also the educators.
The teachers, where often not
on fairness and that injustice
plays out in the school.
So it's not just the justice system,
there's a lot of injustice
in our public schools.
So that's my question.
- So I think the question is,
it sounds like it's about prevention
and really rethinking
prosecutors in the community.
- I'll just say quickly,
we have a truancy law in our state,
gives the prosecutor the ability
to file cases in court when
kids stop going to school.
We have taken that instead
and used that moment to
do a series of workshops,
I have people in my office
who arrange workshops
after school with the
school representative
and the youth who stopped going to school,
I don't want him to go to court,
I want him to go to school,
so we'll file the case then
then we'll stay it immediately,
we'll have that meeting and do a contract
with the school district and
the youth and their parents
and try to figure out why
they are not going to school,
because that's the number
one crime prevention strategy
that we can all pursue
is to keep young people in school.
Once they drop out of school
they are five times more likely
to go to prison during their lifetime.
So sometimes it's a learning difficulty,
sometimes the parents don't understand
the value of education.
So that's our community
engagement with schools
is to try to help keep those
cases from coming to us.
We also don't file cases
that necessarily come
from the school campus
if they can be dealt with
with a different disciplinary
approach on campus.
So that's one of the downsides
of having school resource officers,
police officers on campus,
is that often the administration
will just turn those
cases over to the SRO,
and they don't know anything more
than to take the case to us,
when it should have
been resolved at school
with some sort of
restorative Justice program.
- For me it's a combination
of various approaches.
My wife is a public school teacher.
So I've been very committed to try
to figure out how I could
best support our schools.
We spend a considerable
amount of our resources
on doing programming with
schools after school,
weekend events from sporting
events to academic events,
we have a chess program,
we have a bunch of other things
that the office helps pay for
to be involved with our schools.
I think for me one of
the things that I did
was again saying that
these cases did not belong
in our local criminal courts,
so I supported raise the age in 2016.
Most of our cases in Brooklyn now
are starting to go to our family courts,
but I'm also partnering with my office
to do things on bullying and
cyber terrorism basically,
because it's what is with these kids
to try to make sure
that the office is seen
as a resource two parents and to children,
and not simply as someone
who is adding to the difficulties of it.
But largely I'm moving away
from school-based offenses in my office
and saying that's not the role
of the Brooklyn DA's office.
- We have time for one more question,
so we can take it from this mic over here.
One part question please.
- My name is Hannah Howard,
I'm a student here at NYU.
A good person I think that
wants to do prosecution.
And my question
is about these ATI programs
that you're talking about.
I think they're wonderful,
certainly a much needed change,
but they don't actually shrink
the role of the prosecutor,
I think they really expand it.
And in ways that I think really
require people to make decisions
and to play roles that
they're not prepared for all.
So I wonder if you
think that the end goals
that we should be getting better
people that are making those decisions,
and really if we should
be drastically changing the machinery
so that the prosecutors aren't
ultimate decision makers
in the ways that they always have been?
- It's a great observation actually.
It's really a very astute
observation of the system
that as we put in more
alternatives to incarceration
we make getting through the justice system
a little bit more complicated.
For my office, one of the things
that actually came out during
Emily writing her book,
was about the role of prosecutors
in making decision points during
an ATI and untrained social workers,
and so we have pivoted in Brooklyn,
but it does actually make the role
of prosecutors a little bit more complex,
because we're in an area that
we're not best suited for,
we're in an area were trying
to help rehabilitative services,
that is a switch for DA's offices,
so the type of people that my office
is looking to bring in now
are actually people with
that kind of expertise.
Starting to hire more social workers
and people who are licensed
to do this type of work
as opposed to prosecutors who
were always very risk adverse,
and make decisions,
I think you could speak to it.
But it is a very, very
important acknowledgement
that as we do more ATI
it becomes a lot more
difficult for both the defense
and for those accused
to navigate the system.
- You're really talking about
unintended consequences right,
and the concern that in trying
to make the system more merciful,
it can also just ensnare people
in these long-term relationships
with the court system
that in the end don't make things better.
I think it's absolutely
an important concern to
keep all of our eyes on.
I also think as I look around the country,
there are places where these
programs don't exist at all.
So we both need to make
the ones that exist
as sensitive to this concern as possible,
so they can be models.
And then also recognize that
just having the conversation
is kind of a luxury.
- Emily Bazelon, thank
you for joining us today.
We really wish you the best of luck
with your brand-new book.
- Thank you.
(audience applauds)
"Charge: The New Movement to
Transform American Prosecution
and End Mass Incarceration" to our.
