{"id":19135,"date":"2020-01-01T00:31:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-01T00:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=19135"},"modified":"2020-01-02T05:38:57","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T05:38:57","slug":"how-being-tough-on-crime-became-a-political-liability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-being-tough-on-crime-became-a-political-liability\/","title":{"rendered":"How being ‘tough on crime’ became a political liability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jody D. Armour<\/a>, University of Southern California<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Kamala Harris recently dropped out of the presidential race after months of attacks from the left<\/a> for her \u201ctough-on-crime\u201d record as San Francisco\u2019s district attorney and as California\u2019s attorney general.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, the idea that being tough on crime would be a liability \u2013 not an asset \u2013 was unthinkable for both Democrats and Republicans.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton, during the 1992 presidential race, interrupted his campaign so he could return to Arkansas to witness the execution of a mentally disabled man<\/a>. During Harris\u2019 2014 reelection campaign for attorney general, she actively sought \u2013 and won \u2013 the endorsements of more than 50 law enforcement groups<\/a> en route to a landslide victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But something has changed in recent years. Harris\u2019 failure to gain traction as a presidential candidate has coincided with a growing number of \u201cprogressive prosecutors.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past, I would have scoffed at the notion of a progressive prosecutor. It would have seemed like a ridiculous oxymoron.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The unchecked power of prosecutors<\/h2>\n

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\u2019t promised the state\u2019s principal witness \u2013 then serving a long sentence \u2013 leniency in return for testifying against my father.<\/p>\n

In truth, they had struck that very bargain. After studying the warden\u2019s own law books, my father appealed the conviction, representing himself. He was ultimately vindicated by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals<\/a> after proving that the district attorney had deliberately lied to the jury.<\/p>\n

That was in 1974. I went on to become a lawyer and law professor<\/a>. During the years I spent teaching and studying the relationship between race and the law, the prison population exploded<\/a>, and my distrust toward government prosecutors only deepened. Too often, it seemed like they were bringing excessively punitive charges 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.<\/p>\n

In 2017, law professor John Pfaff was able to show<\/a> that mass incarceration was due, first and foremost, to the nearly unchecked power of district attorneys.<\/p>\n

With reported crimes and arrests 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 one key statistic<\/a>: Between 1994 and 2008, the probability that a district attorney would file a felony charge against someone who\u2019s been arrested roughly doubled<\/a>, from about 1 in 3 to nearly 2 in 3.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
To some voters, the Democratic Party\u2019s approach to criminal justice under Bill Clinton hasn\u2019t aged well.<\/span>
\nCurrent Affairs<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than stiff drug laws, punitive judges, overzealous cops or private prisons, prosecutors had been the main drivers<\/a> of a prison population<\/a> that had quadrupled since the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, black Americans continued to be disproportionately incarcerated. In 2017, there were 1,549 black prisoners for every 100,000 black adults \u2013 nearly six times<\/a> the incarceration rate for whites and nearly double the rate for Hispanics.<\/p>\n

This prosecutorial approach wasn\u2019t punished at the ballot box; instead, racking up convictions and plea deals seemed to bolster the political careers of district attorneys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new sheriffs in town<\/h2>\n

No longer.<\/p>\n

Since 2013, roughly 30 reform-minded prosecutors have been elected. A few now preside over prosecutorial staffs in some of the nation\u2019s biggest cities, like Philadelphia\u2019s Larry Krasner<\/a> and Boston\u2019s Rachael Rollins<\/a>. But they also include chief prosecutors of smaller municipalities, like Satana Deberry<\/a>, who was elected district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina, in 2018, and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti<\/a>, the commonwealth\u2019s attorney of Arlington County, Virginia, who won on a platform of ending mass incarceration in 2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Satana Deberry won her district attorney race in 2018 by campaigning on ending cash bail.<\/span>
\nSatana Deberry<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These prosecutors are reinventing the role of the modern district attorney. Krasner, for example, 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 nearly 75% of the vote<\/a> in the general election.<\/p>\n

In 2018, before a packed lecture hall, Krasner told my law students<\/a> that ending racialized mass incarceration is \u201cthe most important civil rights issue of our time.\u201d He pointed out that the key difference between a traditional prosecutor and progressive one is that the latter is a \u201cprosecutor with compassion\u201d and \u201ca public defender with power.\u201d<\/p>\n

This growing crop of \u201cprosecutors with compassion\u201d and \u201cpublic defenders with power\u201d has upended my own binary way of thinking about the role of the district attorney.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve realized that a district attorney can adopt a fundamentally different moral compass and conception of justice. While traditional \u201claw and order\u201d prosecutors possess a moral, legal and political compass that sharply distinguishes between victims and perpetrators, I\u2019d argue that truly progressive prosecutors recognize that \u201churt people hurt people<\/a>\u201d and refuse to subordinate the values of restoration, rehabilitation and redemption to those of retribution, retaliation and revenge.<\/p>\n

These two sets of values can collide. Many entrenched judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, police unions and legislators have loudly opposed \u2013 or have actively resisted \u2013 this shift to restoration and redemption.<\/p>\n

Progressive prosecutors, according to U.S. Attorney General William Barr<\/a>, are \u201cundercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law.\u201d In a December rally, President Trump singled out Krasner<\/a>, calling him \u201cthe worst district attorney,\u201d one who \u201clets killers out almost immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has drawn the ire of President Trump.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Matt Rourke<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 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 responded by reassigning 24 aggravated murder cases<\/a> to another state attorney who was amenable to the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Ayala sued to have the cases returned to her jurisdiction. She lost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What changed?<\/h2>\n

Nonetheless, progressive prosecutors would have never attained power in the first place if their views didn\u2019t resonate with voters.<\/p>\n

Michelle Alexander\u2019s 2010 book, \u201cThe New Jim Crow<\/a>,\u201d 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Among civil rights activists, issues like affirmative action in higher education had been consuming a lot of time, energy and resources. Alexander\u2019s book helped redirect attention to racialized mass incarceration as a main battlefront in U.S. race relations.<\/p>\n

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 has led weekly demonstrations for over two years<\/a> in front of the Hall of Justice. They\u2019re protesting Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey for failing to adequately address police misconduct.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Protesters gather outside the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles in May 2018.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Damian Dovarganes<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lacey, who is up for reelection, faces two opponents. Both of them \u2013 former San Francisco District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n and former public defender Rachel Rossi \u2013 are running on progressive platforms.<\/p>\n

In March, we\u2019ll see if the Los Angeles County District Attorney\u2019s office \u2013 the nation\u2019s largest county-wide prosecutorial agency \u2013 will be the latest to join the progressive prosecutor movement.<\/p>\n

[ Deep knowledge, daily.<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>. ]\"The<\/p>\n

Jody D. Armour<\/a>, Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law, University of Southern California<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jody D. Armour, University of Southern California Kamala Harris recently dropped out of the presidential race after months of attacks from the left for her \u201ctough-on-crime\u201d record as San Francisco\u2019s district attorney and as California\u2019s attorney general. A few years ago, the idea that being tough on crime would be a liability \u2013 not an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[5548,986,1701,1707,474,7319,2546,2480,7464],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19143,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19135\/revisions\/19143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}