We can stop needlessly caging people right now
if prosecutors will just open the locks.
I'm Emily Bazelon.
I wrote a book called Charged,
the New Movement to Transform American Prosecution
and End Mass Incarceration.
So if you go back to Richard Nixon,
you see politicians start to really capitalize
on people's fear of crime.
- I pledge to you
that the new Attorney General will open a new front
against the filth peddlers and the narcotics peddlers
who are corrupting the lives
of the children of this country.
- And you see that translate into promises
to raise sentences, to keep people in prison,
to create mandatory minimum sentences.
We've created this huge punishment machine
and it's still functioning and grinding along every day,
but there's increasing awareness and interest
in taking apart that machine.
The American public is receptive right now
to taking steps to reduce and end mass incarceration.
In 2010 I was working on a story
about reforming California's three strikes law,
and I was talking to the Republican district attorney
of Los Angeles at the time,
and he told me this story
that when he was starting out as a prosecutor,
the assistant DA sitting right next to him.
File landed on this other guy's desk,
and it was a man named Gregory Taylor who was homeless.
Gregory Taylor had unscrewed the screen door
to a church food pantry in order to get in
because he was hungry.
This guy was gonna charge this as a third strike.
Gregory Taylor was gonna go to prison
for the rest of his life.
And he told me this story,
he said that he would never have done that.
And I thought that's crazy,
that someone's whole life, whether they get locked up,
that depends on who the individual prosecutor is.
We think in America that if you face criminal charges,
a jury is gonna decide your fate,
but that's just not true anymore.
The reality is that only one to 2% of criminal cases
end up before a jury.
Everybody else plea bargains,
and that means that prosecutors in America
have tremendous power, way more power
than the system was designed for,
and there are lots of bad things about that.
But at this moment in time it also presents an opportunity
because there's a growing social movement
and really bipartisan consensus
that mass incarceration has spun out of control.
And we as local voters have the power
to elect our local district attorney.
The reform-minded prosecutors who've already taken office,
when they come through with their promises,
they're showing us the path
to this new criminal justice system.
What happened in Philadelphia were that
some community groups, especially in communities of color,
they were really ready for change.
So Larry Krasner comes in as this reform candidate
and these community groups really get behind him.
And they figure out this essential insight
about a local election for DA.
Not that many people vote.
Not that many people care.
They were going door to door for Larry Krasner,
and it had a profound effect.
He was elected DA.
And he came into the district attorney's office
promising to end mass incarceration.
There's a similar story in Brooklyn.
The district attorney in Brooklyn, Eric Gonzalez,
is helping people expunge old crimes
by holding workshops with defense attorneys
and actually local law schools.
People can just come in and find out how to do this,
as opposed to being left to figure it out on their own.
Another of these is in Kansas City, Kansas.
Mark Dupree is the first African American elected as DA,
and among his reforms have been instituting a rule
where prosecutors will turn over evidence
very early on in a case.
Instead of trying for what we call trial by ambush,
the idea that you're gonna nail someone
with some secret evidence you have at trial,
he is giving evidence over earlier
so that people know what the state's got on them
and can make a knowing decision
about how to handle their case.
There's also this restorative justice program
in Washington DC.
Karl Racine is the chief prosecutor in Washington DC,
and they have this interesting program there
where young people who've harmed someone
come in and talk with that person.
The idea is that instead of punishing people,
sometimes what's most meaningful
is to offer some kind of healing and reconciliation.
Not just for the good of the person who did the wrong
but also for the good of the person who was harmed
and for the community.
80% of the young people
who went through this program avoided rearrest.
We the people, local voters, elect prosecutors,
and that means that their power is our power.
We have the power to shape
and reshape the choices they make.
We can put people into these tremendously powerful offices
with our local votes.
We can change the whole shape
of the criminal justice system
with people who we elect locally
without changing a single law.
Even if you've never had any experience
of the criminal justice system, you should care about it,
because it's a reflection of the morality of our society
and I think these new DAs are trying to turn that around.
They're trying to show people
that safety and fairness go together.
They're not in tension with each other.
They're two halves of the same whole.
Emily Bazelon's book Charged is an incredible deep dive
on the state of prosecution in America
and the role that prosecutors can play in reforming the criminal justice system.
So please check that out, and don't forget to hit Subscribe for more great videos from Freethink.