Envisioning Safety: Community-Driven Prosecution Reform in Wyandotte County

By Maresi Starzmann and Andrew Taylor

The reform prosecution movement faces a critical moment. With the recent uptick in violent crime, reform prosecutors face unprecedented attacks and calls for a return to “tough-on-crime” tactics. Those attacks rest on the false belief that criminal legal system reforms endanger public safety. To sustain the movement, reform prosecutors must build the case that their approach will make communities safer, and the Vera Institute of Justice’s (Vera’s) Reshaping Prosecution initiative is well-positioned to help them do so. Reshaping Prosecution works with prosecutors to build evidence that alternatives to incarceration offer a better path to safer communities. In doing that work, Vera centers race equity and emphasizes collaborating with communities because the path to solutions begins with the voices of those most proximate to the issues. Vera’s partnership with Wyandotte County District Attorney (DA) Mark Dupree’s office from 2019 to 2022 represented a unique pilot to center marginalized voices in prosecution reform efforts. Vera provided its traditional quantitative analysis of racial inequities to highlight

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 38p.