5 ms·

Myths and Realities: Prosecutors and Criminal Justice Reform

16 points by hn_acker 2y ago

hn_acker 2y ago
The subtitle is: > There is no clear relationship between pro-reform prosecutors and increased crime.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  Why does YC’s president and CEO ignore this research and claim otherwise in his persistent campaigns online and irl?
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Lots of the “elites” read and hold in high regard extremely shoddy right-wing writing by lazy-opportunist or outright fraudster “intellectuals” that pushes crap like this. You’ve probably seen some books of this sort given glowing recommendations by posters on this very site. See: If Books Could Kill [edit] the apparent appeal of these is that they tend to push a “you’re already doing great by Doing Capitalism, and the best thing you can do is keep doing what you were inclined to do anyway, which was more of that, because other solutions don’t work” message to their readers, which has obvious conscience-assuaging appeal and utility as PR/cover for future actions for the rich & powerful. These books happen to also surprisingly-often launder other right wing stuff like bigotry or anti-criminal-justice-reform positions alongside the straightforward flattery.
    - rustcleaner 2y ago
      I am so right wing I sympathize with sovereign citizens and push for anti-overreach reforms on that basis.
PopAlongKid 2y ago
I question whether it is the prosecutor's primary job to reduce crime. Instead I think it is their job to get justice under the law for crimes committed. I was well along in age before becoming aware that prosecutors have a far greater impact on our justice system than courts and juries, via plea deals, adding or dropping various charges, letting statutes of limitations run, and so on.
qingcharles 2y ago
Pro-reform prosecutors are rarer than hens' teeth. It's like being a decent person and then becoming a police officer. The rot is institutionalized and it is very hard to avoid being changed once you're inside the system. The criminal justice system has taken some reasonable reforms in the last decade (e.g. Illinois' removal of cash bail), but all of these reforms have come from outside pressure groups, not an internal moment of realization. There is no incentive for prosecutors to improve. A 2003 report by the Center for Public Integrity examined over 11,400 allegations of prosecutorial misconduct between 1970 and 2003, leading to dismissals in 2,012 cases. Despite this, only 44 prosecutors faced disciplinary action, with seven cases dismissed, and none were disbarred. Only one prosecutor in US history that I'm aware of has ever been criminally convicted for misconduct. The attorney disciplinary board in Illinois informed me they will no longer even accept complaints of misconduct against prosecutors, only defense attorneys.
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  > Pro-reform prosecutors are rarer than hens' teeth. We are lucky that they are so, because progressive reformers in the prosecutor's office have unleashed unparalleled destruction. See, for example, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco or Pamela Price in Oakland.
  - inferiorhuman 2y ago
    See, for example, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco or Pamela Price in Oakland. Both of whom went after police misconduct and were eventually ousted in recall campaigns funded by those same police officers. There's a reason that the main group behind the Boudin recall was based in Novato, and it's not because San Francisco annexed parts of Marin County. Let's not forget either that SFPD staged a soft strike until Boudin was recalled — for instance the cops that stood by and watched as a marijuana dispensary was robbed in 2021. It's more than a bit disingenuous to suggest that the police aren't responsible for their own inaction. OPD's tried similar behavior, but they've been under federal receivership for a few decades now so that's expected. Boudin's successor, Brooke Jenkins, famously had her initial transition meetings run by Breed's staffers. That's pretty much the opposite of stamping out corruption.
gadders 2y ago
tl;dr - A think tank in favour of criminal justice reform marks its own homework and finds its policies aren't harmful.
- sdellis 2y ago
  Do you have counter evidence or a critique on methodology that disputes this study? If so, it would be great to post here for comparison.
  - jkartchner 2y ago
    No one is freeing up resources for a felony prosecutor by eliminating Driving Under Suspended cases, handled by a completely different prosecutor in a completely different courtroom. No one's saving a felony docket by eliminating the need to prosecute niche crimes like aviation fraud or abortion or unlawful dog breeding. No one can undisputedly connect bail reform with an increase or a decrease in crime or pre-trial recidivism. No one can glean statistics from major cities only, conclude they are not harmful, and then imply reform must not be harmful for rural areas. There are usually more prosecutors elected in rural areas than populated ones. Crime is tightly situational, geographically tied, culturally bound. Policies therefore must also be situational, geographically tied, and culturally bound. Some things might be universally bad. Those should be excised everywhere. But things that are not universally good should not be endorsed universally. I got the impression here that the writer wants some reforms to be endorsed universally.
  - gadders 2y ago
    I do not. However, the authors of this study are hardly a disinterested party.
jkartchner 2y ago
I am a prosecutor. I used to be a criminal defense attorney. Crime comes from a complicated collection of sources and circumstances. Efforts to reduce crime, therefore, require an evaluation of the complications and circumstances in a given area. The causes of crime are geographically, economically, and culturally bound, and solutions probably should vary dramatically from area to area. I know some people may not agree, but an oft-overlooked component of crime and law enforcement is culture. American crime, at least in part, is what it is today from our country's own defiant and ignorant understanding of what freedom is. "You can't tell me what to do with a gun." "You can't tell me to get out of my own car." Combine it with an unhealthy dose of American exceptionalism and social circumstances that contribute to crime and we get stupid like sovereign citizens, election denialism, and hilarious black-or-white efforts to villify law enforcement. Our country breeds criminals and idiocy in the classroom almost as much as bad parenting because we're told over and over that this is the best and most free place in the world and children in africa are starving. It's in our collective psychology. So every social pain is both a source of cognitive dissonance and King George III back from the dead to tax our freedoms. This is evident to me in the way the law in other countries is both written and enforced. Japan's violence is a far cry from ours. Canada isn't some paragon of legislation, yet their crime rates are very low. Interestingly enough, Canada's indigenous people make up a disproportionately HUGE amount of their incarcerated, but no one cares. But American cops were just born bad and are taught only to shoot the black people. As if law enforcement doesn't come out of the exact same pool of people who become office workers who screw around when they probably should be working, teachers who diddle their students, and negligent engineers who cheated their way through school. School shootings in America exist because they're a cultural touchstone for malignant attention and perverse notoriety, yet the issue is reduced to being either mental illness or guns. The fact that nobody can touch our guns is a symptom of the death caused, not the source of the issue. Prosecutor's are little more than a reflection of the cultural expectations and demands of a given area. Articles like this are therefore both laughably myopic in their conclusions and a little dangerous in the way they perpetuate this tug of war we seem to be in. That said, I'm glad there are efforts from new prosecutors to reduce both disparity in treatment of people and legitimate efforts to eliminate waste and unneeded suffering in reducing crime. But the solution isn't a decision not to prosecute ABORTION, for which there are probably like 10 cases a year for. We'll never come up with consistent cause and effect relationships with this kind of whack a mole policy making. America needs to start thinking differently, starting with an admission that where there are people there will be criminals and understanding those criminals is more important than any other effort to reduce injustice for anyone.
AcerbicZero 2y ago
I think were missing some key pieces of data to evaluate the claims made in this article; and I think the authors of this article know that and are actively trying to avoid looking at that data. A fairly obvious example, imo - if police know their local prosecutor wont prosecute certain crimes (theft, property damage, drunk and disorderly), police tend to stop trying to arrest people for those crimes, and the overall rate for those crimes will go down (in the data at least). The victims on the other hand, tend to get little comfort from the nice looking excel charts. Ive lived in enough west coast cities over the last decade to have a pretty solid understanding of how this particular game gets played, but I'd love to be proven wrong; Lets just see all the data eh?
- vundercind 2y ago
  > if police know their local prosecutor wont prosecute certain crimes (theft, property damage, drunk and disorderly), police tend to stop trying to arrest people for those crimes, and the overall rate for those crimes will go down (in the data at least). This is why you have to use something like victimization surveys, which appears to be what their data source has done.

16 points by hn_acker 2y ago

hn_acker 2y ago

The subtitle is: > There is no clear relationship between pro-reform prosecutors and increased crime.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wahnfrieden 2y ago
Why does YC’s president and CEO ignore this research and claim otherwise in his persistent campaigns online and irl?
- vundercind 2y ago
  Lots of the “elites” read and hold in high regard extremely shoddy right-wing writing by lazy-opportunist or outright fraudster “intellectuals” that pushes crap like this. You’ve probably seen some books of this sort given glowing recommendations by posters on this very site. See: If Books Could Kill [edit] the apparent appeal of these is that they tend to push a “you’re already doing great by Doing Capitalism, and the best thing you can do is keep doing what you were inclined to do anyway, which was more of that, because other solutions don’t work” message to their readers, which has obvious conscience-assuaging appeal and utility as PR/cover for future actions for the rich & powerful. These books happen to also surprisingly-often launder other right wing stuff like bigotry or anti-criminal-justice-reform positions alongside the straightforward flattery.
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    I am so right wing I sympathize with sovereign citizens and push for anti-overreach reforms on that basis.

PopAlongKid 2y ago

I question whether it is the prosecutor's primary job to reduce crime. Instead I think it is their job to get justice under the law for crimes committed. I was well along in age before becoming aware that prosecutors have a far greater impact on our justice system than courts and juries, via plea deals, adding or dropping various charges, letting statutes of limitations run, and so on.

qingcharles 2y ago

Pro-reform prosecutors are rarer than hens' teeth. It's like being a decent person and then becoming a police officer. The rot is institutionalized and it is very hard to avoid being changed once you're inside the system. The criminal justice system has taken some reasonable reforms in the last decade (e.g. Illinois' removal of cash bail), but all of these reforms have come from outside pressure groups, not an internal moment of realization. There is no incentive for prosecutors to improve. A 2003 report by the Center for Public Integrity examined over 11,400 allegations of prosecutorial misconduct between 1970 and 2003, leading to dismissals in 2,012 cases. Despite this, only 44 prosecutors faced disciplinary action, with seven cases dismissed, and none were disbarred. Only one prosecutor in US history that I'm aware of has ever been criminally convicted for misconduct. The attorney disciplinary board in Illinois informed me they will no longer even accept complaints of misconduct against prosecutors, only defense attorneys.

baggy_trough 2y ago
> Pro-reform prosecutors are rarer than hens' teeth. We are lucky that they are so, because progressive reformers in the prosecutor's office have unleashed unparalleled destruction. See, for example, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco or Pamela Price in Oakland.
- inferiorhuman 2y ago
  See, for example, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco or Pamela Price in Oakland. Both of whom went after police misconduct and were eventually ousted in recall campaigns funded by those same police officers. There's a reason that the main group behind the Boudin recall was based in Novato, and it's not because San Francisco annexed parts of Marin County. Let's not forget either that SFPD staged a soft strike until Boudin was recalled — for instance the cops that stood by and watched as a marijuana dispensary was robbed in 2021. It's more than a bit disingenuous to suggest that the police aren't responsible for their own inaction. OPD's tried similar behavior, but they've been under federal receivership for a few decades now so that's expected. Boudin's successor, Brooke Jenkins, famously had her initial transition meetings run by Breed's staffers. That's pretty much the opposite of stamping out corruption.

gadders 2y ago

tl;dr - A think tank in favour of criminal justice reform marks its own homework and finds its policies aren't harmful.

sdellis 2y ago
Do you have counter evidence or a critique on methodology that disputes this study? If so, it would be great to post here for comparison.
- jkartchner 2y ago
  No one is freeing up resources for a felony prosecutor by eliminating Driving Under Suspended cases, handled by a completely different prosecutor in a completely different courtroom. No one's saving a felony docket by eliminating the need to prosecute niche crimes like aviation fraud or abortion or unlawful dog breeding. No one can undisputedly connect bail reform with an increase or a decrease in crime or pre-trial recidivism. No one can glean statistics from major cities only, conclude they are not harmful, and then imply reform must not be harmful for rural areas. There are usually more prosecutors elected in rural areas than populated ones. Crime is tightly situational, geographically tied, culturally bound. Policies therefore must also be situational, geographically tied, and culturally bound. Some things might be universally bad. Those should be excised everywhere. But things that are not universally good should not be endorsed universally. I got the impression here that the writer wants some reforms to be endorsed universally.
- gadders 2y ago
  I do not. However, the authors of this study are hardly a disinterested party.

jkartchner 2y ago

I am a prosecutor. I used to be a criminal defense attorney. Crime comes from a complicated collection of sources and circumstances. Efforts to reduce crime, therefore, require an evaluation of the complications and circumstances in a given area. The causes of crime are geographically, economically, and culturally bound, and solutions probably should vary dramatically from area to area. I know some people may not agree, but an oft-overlooked component of crime and law enforcement is culture. American crime, at least in part, is what it is today from our country's own defiant and ignorant understanding of what freedom is. "You can't tell me what to do with a gun." "You can't tell me to get out of my own car." Combine it with an unhealthy dose of American exceptionalism and social circumstances that contribute to crime and we get stupid like sovereign citizens, election denialism, and hilarious black-or-white efforts to villify law enforcement. Our country breeds criminals and idiocy in the classroom almost as much as bad parenting because we're told over and over that this is the best and most free place in the world and children in africa are starving. It's in our collective psychology. So every social pain is both a source of cognitive dissonance and King George III back from the dead to tax our freedoms. This is evident to me in the way the law in other countries is both written and enforced. Japan's violence is a far cry from ours. Canada isn't some paragon of legislation, yet their crime rates are very low. Interestingly enough, Canada's indigenous people make up a disproportionately HUGE amount of their incarcerated, but no one cares. But American cops were just born bad and are taught only to shoot the black people. As if law enforcement doesn't come out of the exact same pool of people who become office workers who screw around when they probably should be working, teachers who diddle their students, and negligent engineers who cheated their way through school. School shootings in America exist because they're a cultural touchstone for malignant attention and perverse notoriety, yet the issue is reduced to being either mental illness or guns. The fact that nobody can touch our guns is a symptom of the death caused, not the source of the issue. Prosecutor's are little more than a reflection of the cultural expectations and demands of a given area. Articles like this are therefore both laughably myopic in their conclusions and a little dangerous in the way they perpetuate this tug of war we seem to be in. That said, I'm glad there are efforts from new prosecutors to reduce both disparity in treatment of people and legitimate efforts to eliminate waste and unneeded suffering in reducing crime. But the solution isn't a decision not to prosecute ABORTION, for which there are probably like 10 cases a year for. We'll never come up with consistent cause and effect relationships with this kind of whack a mole policy making. America needs to start thinking differently, starting with an admission that where there are people there will be criminals and understanding those criminals is more important than any other effort to reduce injustice for anyone.

AcerbicZero 2y ago

I think were missing some key pieces of data to evaluate the claims made in this article; and I think the authors of this article know that and are actively trying to avoid looking at that data. A fairly obvious example, imo - if police know their local prosecutor wont prosecute certain crimes (theft, property damage, drunk and disorderly), police tend to stop trying to arrest people for those crimes, and the overall rate for those crimes will go down (in the data at least). The victims on the other hand, tend to get little comfort from the nice looking excel charts. Ive lived in enough west coast cities over the last decade to have a pretty solid understanding of how this particular game gets played, but I'd love to be proven wrong; Lets just see all the data eh?

vundercind 2y ago
> if police know their local prosecutor wont prosecute certain crimes (theft, property damage, drunk and disorderly), police tend to stop trying to arrest people for those crimes, and the overall rate for those crimes will go down (in the data at least). This is why you have to use something like victimization surveys, which appears to be what their data source has done.