Pushing Forward: Prosecution Reform and Racial Equity across Six Counties
By Akhi Johnson, et al.
In 2020, after a request for proposal process, Vera began partnerships with prosecutors’ offices in six jurisdictions: Boulder County, Colorado; Contra Costa County, California; DeKalb County, Georgia; Ingham County, Michigan; Ramsey County, Minnesota; and Suffolk County, Massachusetts. The partnerships were initially slated to run for 12–18 months, but the pandemic and the 2020 racial justice movement required adapting and lengthening those engagements to two years. Three goals guided the partnerships: reducing mass incarceration, addressing racial disparities, and increasing accountability to those most impacted by the criminal legal system. Prosecutors wield tremendous power, as their decisions reach nearly every aspect of the criminal legal system. They decide whom to charge—and with what offense; whether to ask for bail; when to provide evidence to the defense; what plea offer to make; what sentence to recommend; and, in some instances, whether someone should receive parole. However, prosecutors have the greatest influence at charging, when they decide whether someone enters the criminal legal system, and their charging discretion is virtually unchecked. Although Vera helped each office to examine its impact at every discretion point, the primary focus was on how to reduce harms at charging—through who was charged, what crime was charged, and who could be diverted away from traditional prosecution. Vera’s approach to addressing racial disparities focused on systemic issues rather than potential biases of individual actors. Rather than analyze whether similarly situated people received different treatment based on their race, Vera highlighted broader trends to illustrate which communities the criminal legal system impacts most and in what ways. For example, Vera’s analysis revealed that although Black people represent 55 percent of DeKalb County, Georgia’s population, they made up 81 percent of the adult caseload, 79 percent of juvenile cases, and 93 percent of children charged as adults.2 Rather than seeking to determine who was at fault, Vera’s analysis describes trends and starts conversations within communities about the historical and societal factors contributing to disparities and how stakeholders can respond. For each partnership, a key goal was to help prosecutors be more accountable to communities impacted by their decisions. In many areas around the country, people do not know who their elected prosecutors are, let alone how an office’s decisions affect safety in their communities. That gap represents a missed opportunity to learn from people uniquely positioned to inform policy discussions, and it leaves communities ill-equipped to gauge the performance of their elected officials. Vera worked in partnership with each office to facilitate the public sharing of data to inform communities and ground conversations on potential reform efforts. As one community group noted, Vera’s engagement “has made our prosecutor more aware of the need for a greater relationship with the community. . . . [W]e have a lot of systemic issues . . . [and] Vera’s presence has allowed us to continue to push the conversations forward.” Multiple factors impacted each office’s ability to implement reforms during the engagements, but the political climate was most significant. With increased scrutiny of reform prosecutors and false narratives that communities had to choose between safety and reform, some jurisdictions faced unique challenges in announcing changes. Vera worked with each jurisdiction to assess what was feasible in the current moment and adjusted accordingly. Despite the political climate, our partners made significant strides—including a groundbreaking policy in Ramsey County, Minnesota, inspired by Philando Castile’s death, to deter non– public safety (pretextual) traffic stops. However, even when an office did not announce a particular policy, Vera observed shifts in how prosecutors approached cases based on discussions prompted by the engagements. As partner offices noted, Vera’s work prompted new discussions about how to assess cases and revealed problem areas. One prosecutor reflected that the engagement “changed the way I think about my job and my role . . . being more mindful about the decision to charge somebody with a felony, and, you know, even if that case is later dismissed, the impact that can have on them.”
New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 40p.