Taken together, they signaled a new chapter in the political battles over criminal justice reform and decarceration. 

As more candidates win these offices on outsider platforms that involve reducing incarceration and ending cash bail, they are chipping away at the isolation that greeted their initial wins, and building on each other’s successes. Organizers too are now fighting on many fronts up and down the ballot, targeting DAs, sheriffs, attorneys general and even high bailiffs.

But proponents of a more punitive approach are also scrambling to stop these candidates and thwart them once they win. They are invoking a recent rise in murders to defend more draconian policies, even if the increase also took place on the watch of officials who implemented no reform. Within days of carrying Virginia last November, the new Republican attorney general cast it as a top priority to target the state’s reform-minded prosecutors. Even as Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner easily won re-election in 2021, critics of San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin (arguably the nation’s most visible decarceral DA after Krasner) have forced a recall vote against him this summer.

In 2022, that clash between reformers and tough-on-crime opponents will continue to play out across the nation, and shape the criminal legal system in dozens of electoral battlegrounds. 

There are more than 2,400 elections just for prosecutor and sheriff in 2022 (the list of these elections is available in a new Bolts database). These offices wield tremendous discretion over incarceration and law enforcement, and major battles are already brewing over how to use this power from Boston and Raleigh to San Jose and Las Vegas. 

These electoral conflicts extend into new territory this year. Reformers seek to build upon the sparks of success they’ve had in judicial races since 2020. And while politicians who want to maintain or increase police funding largely prevailed in mayoral elections last year, new races could test the bounds of municipal police reforms in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

Bolts will cover these races and their outsized consequences throughout 2022. To kick off our midterm coverage, below is a preliminary guide to eight big questions that will define how criminal justice issues fare at the ballot box this year.

1. Can reform prosecutors continue their rise, or will they face setbacks?

Only a few years ago, it stood out whenever public defenders ran for DA or when candidates espoused platforms of slashing incarceration. But now many are sitting in office, and reformers are the incumbents playing defense in some places.

Take Rachael Rollins’ trajectory. She became DA of Boston after vowing during her 2018 campaign to not prosecute a list of low-level offenses, which felt novel at the time for a DA but has since grown more common among progressives. In 2021, President Biden appointed Rollins as U.S. Attorney, and she was confirmed in the fall over the objections of Republican senators. 

Rollins’ rapid rise testifies to a leftward shift on criminal justice. However, it also means local progressives have to start over since she can no longer run for re-election this year. Boston is one of the places where reformers risk losing ground in 2022. San Francisco voters will decide whether to recall their DA, Boudin, who has drawn sustained fire since 2019 from opponents who include tech business leaders, the retail industry, and the mayor. Wesley Bell is up for re-election in St. Louis County four years after ousting the prosecutor who did not press charges against the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson.

In dozens of other elections this year, the policies that fuel mass incarceration remain in the hot seat.

Many states elect all or nearly all of their prosecutors in 2022, and a new crop of reform candidates are pressing their case for major shifts in the status quo.

In some places, it’s been decades since voters were last asked to shape the local criminal legal system. Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), home to nearly one million Floridians, will host its first contested prosecutor race in 30 years because a public defender has jumped in the race. 

Public defenders are also running for prosecutor in Santa Clara County (San Jose), California, Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota, where chief prosecutor Mike Freeman is not seeking re-election two years after facing protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Outsiders are also trying to take over other DA offices, including a civil rights attorney in Alameda County (Oakland), and a former advocate at the ACLU of Massachusetts, who is challenging a vocal foe of reform in Plymouth County.

Incumbents who have long drawn criticism from reform advocates for their punitive policies are also up for re-election in Clark County, Nevada, and Shelby County, Tennessee. In the latter, prosecutor Amy Weirich drew national attention last week for trumpeting the six-year prison sentence for a Black woman who had registered to vote despite a past felony conviction. 

And the list goes on. North Carolina’s two most populous counties have Democratic primaries that are full of contrasts. Dallas has drawn the same three-candidate field as 2018. Open seats may be hotly disputed in Essex County, Massachusetts, Hidalgo County, Texas, Sacramento County, California, and King County, Washington (Seattle). And because nothing is ever simple in local governments, you may need to keep track of two entirely separate but hotly contested races in Baltimore City and Baltimore County.

2. Will sheriff races put jail conditions and police misconduct under the microscope?

Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva is one of the country’s most vocal foes of criminal justice reform. Besides overseeing a department that frequently draws disturbing headlines about abuse by his deputies, Villanueva has defied efforts at civilian oversight, rehired deputies who were fired for misconducts, and put in place a secret police force to target his critics. 

Villanueva’s re-election bid, perhaps the country’s most high-profile law enforcement race this year, has drawn a large number of contenders, though it remains to be seen how the grassroots activists who have fought the sheriff in recent years respond. Some of the other declared candidates are also mired in controversy.

Sheriff races provide an opening for the public to confront misconduct, dismal jail conditions, and the widespread use of practices like solitary confinement. This year, California will elect nearly all of its sheriffs, alongside other states that include Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. This electoral calendar presents opportunities to assess the records of officials like Thomas Hodgson, the longtime GOP sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts. An ally of Donald Trump, Hodgson has faced statewide and federal probes, lawsuits, protests, and hunger strikes over deaths in the jail and over his treatment of people detained there. 

It’s likely that many incumbents will coast to re-election unopposed, but hotspots of debate are already emerging. In Hennepin County (Minneapolis), the sheriff is retiring after a drunk-driving crash. In Alameda County (Oakland), a pair of reform candidates have formed a combined ticket for DA and sheriff, an unusually concerted effort to change local practices.

3. Can immigrant rights activists further constrain local cooperation with ICE?

Under President Donald Trump, immigrant rights activists had great success challenging sheriffs who helped federal immigration agents. Will that energy transfer to the first major election under Joe Biden? Concerned that the salience of this issue is fading under a Democratic president, activists have warned that local collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to ensnare immigrants regardless of the change in administrations.

On this issue, North Carolina is the most obvious battleground this year. Many candidates who ran on breaking ties with ICE won there in 2018 and then promptly did so once in office. All are up in 2022. In populous Wake County (Raleigh), the old sheriff wants his job back: Republican Donnie Harrison is challenging incumbent Democratic Sheriff Gerald Baker. After he ousted Harrison in 2018, Baker ended Wake County’s participation in ICE’s so-called 287(g) program, which empowers sheriff’s deputies to act as immigration agents. 

The 287(g) program could be an issue elsewhere this year. Of the counties that remain in it, 38 have sheriff elections this year. 

While most of these counties are deeply conversative, a Bolts analysis shows that Joe Biden carried four of them in 2020: Frederick County, Maryland; Barnstable County, Massachusetts; Gallatin County, Montana; and Nash County, North Carolina.

4. Will organizing increase around judicial elections?

Judges are an increasingly visible frontline in the fight over mass incarceration. Still, learning much about judicial candidates in most places remains a herculean task, a major hurdle for the spread of local efforts to “flip the bench” by electing judges running on less carceral approaches.

Still, such campaigns have proved successful in an eclectic mix of jurisdictions in recent years, from New Orleans and Las Vegas in 2020 to Pittsburgh and Missoula in 2021. Hundreds more counties hold local judicial races this year. Reformers are the ones playing defense in Harris County (Houston), where voters elected a wave of new judges in 2018, paving the way for milestone local bail reforms. Many of those judges face a challenger as soon as the March 1 Democratic primary. 

Dozens of supreme court elections also hold major ramifications for criminal justice. The partisan balance is in play in some states (e.g. North Carolina or Ohio), but the stakes transcend partisanship. In Washington State, progressives appointed by Governor Jay Inslee joined milestone rulings on drug policy and youth sentencing last year; two of them now face voters in 2022.

5.  What new paths for reform will open in state-level governments?

Voters will settle roles in state governments that have major ramifications for criminal justice policy—whether by choosing governors (in 36 states), legislatures or attorneys general. In Maryland, for instance, the Republican governor who has pushed lawmakers to toughen sentencing laws and vetoed reforms cannot seek re-election due to term-limits. The governor’s race in Massachusetts hosts a crowded Democratic primary that has some candidates proposing bolder changes than others.

In Arizona, a state where promising reform bills have repeatedly derailed due to divides within the governing Republican Party, the GOP primaries will decide which side has the upper-hand for the upcoming session. In New York, Republicans tried to gain ground in the legislature in 2020 by spreading fear over state bail reforms, only to lose many seats; similar issues remain a major dividing line between gubernatorial and legislative candidates this year.

California may host one of the nation’s most notable attorney general races this year. Among the many challengers to the state’s progressive attorney general, newly appointed to the job last year, is the Sacramento County DA, who has frequently fought criminal justice reforms or championed their rollback.

Meanwhile in North Carolina, state judges have, at least for now, blocked new gerrymandered maps that would have given GOP lawmakers a strong shot at a veto-proof majority. Numerous Republican priorities, including forcing local sheriffs to collaborate with ICE, hang in the balance of what comes next. 

6. Can serious reforms to policing gain traction in city halls?

Mayors have formed something of a barrier against major changes to policing, especially when it comes to the size of police budgets. 2021 reinforced that trend, as many candidates who ran on upending policing lost, with some notable exceptions. Michelle Wu won in Boston, for instance, by making the case that public safety calls for broadly boosting public services.

Voters in 2022 will choose new mayors in the second nation’s most populous city, Los Angeles, as well as in Austin. Those are both municipalities where policies criminalizing homeless people are a major issue. In Washington, D.C., policing is already a major fault line in the race between Mayor Muriel Bowser, who recently called for buttressing police funding, and City Council Member Robert White, who has championed reforms that have put him at odds with the police.

7. With ballot initiatives, how will voters take matters into their own hands?

Politicians remain squishy on drug policy, even when there is evidence that reforms would be popular, so advocates are again pursuing the referendum route. Initiatives to legalize recreational or medical marijuana may end up on the ballot this year in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, among other states. California, Colorado, and Michigan may weigh in on legalizing psychedelics. And activists in Washington are hoping to collect enough signatures for an initiative to decriminalize drug possession, two years after Oregonians approved a landmark referendum doing just that.

Other criminal justice policies will likely end up on the ballot as well. Some California reformers hope to repeal the state’s three-strikes law, for instance, while a law firm is proposing an initiative to toughen sentencing for retail theft (voters easily rejected a similar measure in 2020). Municipal initiatives are also on the table in cities with an unfriendly statewide politics; voters in Austin, for instance, will decide whether to decriminalize marijuana and ban no-knock warrants in May. 

8. How many elections dead end just because no one runs?

Important local elections are routinely uncontested, at times due to shady maneuvering. In some states, controversial barriers to eligibility will be a limiting factor this year, starting with California’s sheriff races.

The filing deadline in most states is still weeks or months away, but if Texas is any indication, uncontested races remain as big an impediment to democratic accountability as ever: only 12 of the 50 DA elections in the state this year drew more than one candidate by the December deadline. In 38 of those 50 counties, prosecutors will waltz into office uncontested, including incumbents in large counties like Collin, Denton and Fort Bend—growing suburban counties, two of which are more populous than Boudin’s jurisdiction of San Francisco, but where the earliest possible election debate over the shape of punishment is now 2026.

This pattern extends to some of the most visibly powerful institutions in the land. Between 2012 and 2018, Georgia held 12 uncontested elections for its state Supreme Court. That remarkable streak was finally broken in 2020, though the four candidates who ran for its two seats all had conservative credentials. With four of Georgia’s nine Supreme Court seats on the ballot this year, the state’s March filing deadline will likely be as decisive as the May election.

The post In 2022, Intense Clashes Between Criminal Justice Reformers and Tough-On-Crime Foes appeared first on Bolts.

The summer’s renewed Black Lives Matter protests brought law enforcement and mass incarceration to the fore in national politics. But at the local level, advocates for criminal justice reform were already prepared to press for change in the 2020 elections.

In recent years, elections for prosecutor and sheriff have upended criminal legal systems around the country. Fueled by local organizing, this shift has brought into power public defenders, civil rights attorneys, and other candidates who are running on reducing incarceration. Emblematic results in big cities have drawn the most attention, but suburban and rural jurisdictions have joined the wave as well.

The Nov. 3 general elections feature new high-stakes showdowns in some of the nation’s most populous counties, including Los Angeles, Arizona’s Maricopa County, and Texas’s Tarrant County. These could bring the criminal legal system the biggest electoral upheaval it has seen to date, closing out a cycle that has already seen plenty of transformative results in primaries.

They will decide whether incoming county officials ever seek the death penalty, whether they prosecute simple drug possession and partner with ICE—just to name some frequent fault lines—and, more broadly, whether they pursue the idea that safety entails ramping up incarceration and policing or else that it calls for shrinking the imprint of the criminal legal system. Prosecutors and sheriffs, after all, exercise immense discretion locally, and they use their clout to influence statewide debates. 

Below I look at 30 of the most important sheriff and prosecutor elections on the ballot this fall.

To be clear, there are thousands of prosecutor and sheriff races this year. Most have drawn only one candidate—this dearth is especially pronounced in some states, such as Wisconsin—but there is still a dizzying number of contested elections. 

This article is born of a yearlong effort by The Appeal: Political Report to organize this chaos and identify the races with the farthest-reaching platforms, or the starkest contrasts. 

After all, it remains very infrequent for candidates in these elections to depart from a conventional tough-on-crime outlook and to be forthcoming about their policy views. This article is likely to not feature even populous jurisdictions with elections if none of the candidates are articulating a clear change from the status quo, opting for sparser counties where the stakes for mass incarceration are more concrete. Still, this list is not meant to be exhaustive; and it focuses on directing readers toward other reporting and analyses, on the Political Report and elsewhere. In addition, a myriad of other offices—including local judges, mayors, and the presidency—on the ballot this fall will shape the criminal legal system going forward.

Importantly, many people who are directly impacted by prosecutorial and law enforcement policies are barred from weighting into these elections due to the felony disenfranchisement rules that still exist in most U.S. states. The system is especially harsh in states that are overrepresented on this list, most notably Florida. On Nov. 3, Californians will decide whether to narrow their state’s disenfranchisement rules through a ballot initiative.

Let’s jump in. The 30 elections are arranged alphabetically by state; stay tuned below for other races to watch, and a review of what unfolded in the primaries.

1 and 2. Arizona | Maricopa County (Phoenix) county attorney and sheriff

Home to nearly 4.5 million residents, Maricopa County holds the keys to the White House and the U.S. Senate. But voters must also decide two high-stakes local elections. The sheriff’s election is the first since the 1980s to not feature Joe Arpaio, who is a prime example of the cruelties that sheriffs can unleash. But his legacy still looms large, Jerry Iannelli explains in his preview for the Political Report, because Republican nominee Jerry Sheridan used to be Arpaio’s deputy. If he beats first-term Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone, he has said he would reopen Arpaio’s outdoor jail, bring back “posses” of armed civilians, and ramp up drug raids.

A long legacy of punitive policies and harsh sentences is also on the line in the county’s prosecutor election, Meg O’Connor previews in the Political Report. Republican Allister Adel has largely maintained the office’s status quo since she was appointed in 2019, and she fought decarcaral proposals when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Democratic challenger Julie Gunnigle, by contrast, has staked a goal of cutting incarceration by 25 percent, for instance by declining to prosecute a slate of lower-level offenses and not using certain charging practices that trigger higher sentences. As is, Arizona has one of the nation’s highest incarceration rates, which leaves a lot of room for change.

3. California | Los Angeles County DA

In March, Angelenos overwhelmingly adopted a ballot initiative to help lower their county’s jail population; county jails are plagued by dire conditions and overcrowding. Will they now also elect a district attorney who shares a decarceral perspective? They are choosing between DA Jackie Lacey and George Gascón, the former DA of San Francisco who authored a progressive measure statewide and is running to bring national reform efforts into LA. Gascón says he wants to slash incarceration, a goal Lacey rejects. Against the backdrop of yearslong local organizing, the two have clashed on the death penalty, police accountability, drug policy, and more. Eliyahu Kamisher previews the race in the Political Report.

4, 5, and 6. Colorado | First District, Eighth District, and 18th District DAs

Republican DAs are retiring in three populous districts, each of which was carried by Democrats in the 2016 presidential race, a recipe for wide-open general elections. Besides the prospect of partisan turnover, candidates have staked opposite stances on some major issues pertaining to criminal justice reform, as I reported in my dive into Colorado in September.

In the First District (Jefferson and Gilpin counties), Republican Matthew Durkin and Democrat Alexis King are worlds apart on whether to continue the punitive war on drugs. Durkin has said penalties for drug possession are too low, whereas King is looking to not prosecute such cases. “The criminal justice system has become the catchment basin for public health issues,” she said.

In the Eighth District (Jackson and Larimer counties), advocates have fought a $75 million project that will expand the jail by 250 beds. Republican Mitch Murray approves of the jail expansion, while Democrat Gordon McLaughlin would rather fight jail overcrowding by decreasing the pretrial population and steer the funds toward “substance abuse and mental health treatment.”

In the 18th District (Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert, and Lincoln counties), the retiring DA was a prominent defender of the death penalty and life without parole sentences for children. John Kellner, a Republican, has signaled he shares similar positions; Democrat Amy Padden approves of abolishing the death penalty and would like the legislature to curb life sentences.

7 and 8. Florida | Pinellas County and Brevard County sheriffs

Bob Gualtieri, Pinellas County’s GOP sheriff, is an influential figure in the state’s right-wing politics. He pushed to arm teachers after the Parkland shootings, and furthered ICE’s agenda in Florida. He now faces Democrat Eliseo Santana, who is calling for significant changes such as terminating contracts with ICE and reducing arrests. “An arrest can lead to greater insecurity, and with greater insecurity we have higher levels of crimes and violence,” he told me in a Q&A. Gualtieri, by contrast, helped ensure that Black Lives Matter protesters were denied bail in June.

In Republican-leaning Brevard County, the Marshall Project reports, the sheriff’s race pits a GOP incumbent known for “tough-on-crime viral videos” against a Democratic public defender. 

9 and 10. Florida | Ninth District (Orlando) and 13th District (Tampa) state attorneys

Florida’s two main prosecutor elections are less about whether criminal justice reform expands than they are a test of whether it retrenches. Back in 2016, the Ninth District (Orange and Osceola counties) elected Aramis Ayala as Florida’s first Black state attorney. But state officials pushed back hard against Ayala’s reforms, and she chose not to run for re-election; the shadow of this retaliation now looms over the race to replace her. Still, the Democratic primary ended with a win by Monique Worrell, the most progressive candidate, who ran with Ayala’s support. Worrell now faces independent Jose Torroella, who calls himself an  “old fashioned” and “law and order” candidate and says people should be prosecuted more harshly. 

In the 13th District (Hillsborough County), Republican challenger Mike Perotti, who works at the sheriff’s office, is running on a similar message of fear. He points to anecdotal instances of recidivism, a common but misleading tactic, to suggest current sentences are not harsh enough. His opponent, Democratic State Attorney Andrew Warren, has associated himself with other reform-minded prosecutors in the country; he touts his new conviction review unit, which this year exonerated a man who had spent 37 years in prison, as well as the process he set up to help Floridians with court debt regain the right to vote. 

11 and 12. Georgia | Cobb County and Gwinnett County sheriffs

The political context in these two populous suburbs of Atlanta is startlingly similar. In each, a Republican sheriff is running a jail mired by deaths, allegations of poor conditions, and contracts with ICE; in each, demographic change and a rising blue tide could usher in Democrats who have promised reforms, including terminating 287(g) contract with ICE. Timothy Pratt previewed these elections’ importance for immigration in the Political Report in September.

Jail conditions loom just as large. In the summer, when a woman died in the Cobb County jail, Democratic nominee Craig Owens said Sheriff Neil Warren “continues to show complete disregard” for the care of detainees. In response, Warren denied that sheriffs can make a difference when it comes to jail suicides. But sheriffs do plenty that aggravates the jail deaths crisis, including not enforcing care protocols and detaining people with mental health or substance use problems instead of diverting them to treatment. Just last week, a judge ruled that Warren was illegally refusing to disclose information about two deaths. And in Gwinnett, where Sheriff Butch Conway is retiring, the jail has faced allegations that it is failing to provide adequate care. 

13 and 14. Georgia | Clarke County sheriff, and Oconee and Clarke counties DA

One thing is certain in Athens-Clarke County: There will soon be a new sheriff in town. In June, Sheriff Ira Edwards lost to challenger John Williams in a Democratic primary that featured stark disagreements around Edwards’s past cooperation with ICE and his donations from the bail bond industry. Williams now faces Republican Robert Hare, who told me he has not yet decided whether he will honor ICE detainers. If elected Williams, wants to advance reform in Athens.

He may gain an ally in the local DA race, which almost did not occur. The state tried to delay the race until 2022, which would have enabled acting DA Brian Patterson to stay in office for two more years without facing voters. But judges recently reinstated the election. Deborah Gonzalez, a former state representative, is carrying the progressive mantle, promising to reduce the use of cash bail and decline to prosecute people over marijuana possession. She will face Patterson, who is a Democrat like Gonzalez but defends the status quo, and independent James Chafin.

15. Hawaii | Honolulu County prosecutor

Hawaii prosecutors have, in recent years, derailed criminal justice reforms, and the Honolulu election this year held the promise to change this punitive culture, I reported in July. The most progressive candidate, public defender Jacquie Esser, finished third in a seven-way primary and was cut from the “top two” runoff. Still, there are contrasts between the remaining contenders. Former judge Steve Alm touts his work to secure alternatives to incarceration, but his platform is vague and he did not respond to questions about his policy views in July and again this month. Morgan Kau, a former prosecutor and defense lawyer, has been more critical of reform goals. She has rejected the premise that Hawaii incarcerates too many people, denied that cash bail disadvantages poor defendants, and defended a carceral approach to drug offenses.

16 and 17. Illinois | Lake County and DeKalb County state’s attorneys

To win a second term, President Trump is betting that voters outside of the country’s biggest cities will react warily to Black Lives Matter. But protests have popped up in suburban and  exurban counties as well. Anna Wilhelmi, a Democratic attorney challenging DeKalb County’s chief prosecutor, Republican Rick Amato, says she is inspired by the protests. If elected, she told me in a Q&A, she would advocate for more funding for social services operating outside of law enforcement. “When you invest in your community, you get so much more back,” she said.

Close by, in Lake County, Michael Nerheim is running for re-election a year after his harsh decision to charge five minors with felony murder over a death during an attempted car theft. Nerheim, a Republican, ended up dropping the charges. Eric Rinehart, his Democratic challenger, criticized the charges and now wants Illinois to narrow its felony murder rule. In talking to the Political Report last year, he said he would tackle “structural failures” but was cautious when outlining how he would change local policy. He has indicated support for statewide reforms such as ending life without parole for minors and abolishing felony disenfranchisement. 

18. Kansas | Shawnee County (Topeka) DA

Will Trump’s persistent unpopularity in cities and suburban areas enable Democrats to break through in this typically GOP county? Republican DA Mike Kagay faces Democratic challenger Joshua Luttrell, a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor who says he decided to run to advance criminal justice reform and to “challenge the idea of what a district attorney is.” In outlining his goal of reducing incarceration, he talks of not seeking cash bail for low-level offenses and reducing the length of sentences, stopping the prosecution of marijuana offenses, and not requiring a guilty plea as a condition for entry into diversion.

19. Louisiana | Orleans Parish (New Orleans) DA

Even punitive DAs take pains to cultivate some reform-friendly facade. Not so, or barely, with New Orleans’s Leon Cannizzaro, who is retiring. Local advocates are working to ensure his replacement unleashes change in New Orleans by demanding that candidates commit to a slate of reforms, such as never seeking the death penalty nor supporting sentencing rules that trigger harsher penalties. In previewing the election for the Political Report, Katie Fernelius draws out important contrasts between the contenders’ policies and records. (This election could go to a  runoff, on Dec. 5, if none of the candidates cross the 50 percent threshold on Nov. 3.)

20. Massachusetts | Norfolk County sheriff

Since his appointment as sheriff, Republican Jerry McDermott has put his stamp on statewide debates; he championed a ballot initiative to make it easier to cooperate with ICE, and spoke up in defense of qualified immunity, the doctrine that shields police officers from civil lawsuits. He also joined a pilot program to expand treatment options within the jail. Democratic challenger Patrick McDermott (no relation) wants to take the office in a different direction—on some issues. As I reported in August, he did not share his views on qualified immunity, but he opposes tighter ties with ICE, and wants more policies that ensure fewer people are arrested in the first place.

21 and 22. Michigan | Oakland County prosecutor and sheriff

Oakland County already voted for change in its Democratic primary for prosecutor: Jessica Cooper, the staunchly carceral incumbent, was defeated. She lost to Karen McDonald, a former judge who has pledged to cut incarceration, not seek cash bail, and not invoke prior convictions to increase sentences. McDonald now faces Republican Lin Goetz, a former prosecutor who defends a more punitive approach. In one recent interview, Goetz described cash bail as essential to public safety, denounced McDonald’s stated goal of decreasing incarceration, and followed Trump’s lead by invoking Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, as boogeymen.

In the sheriff’s race, Republican incumbent Mike Bouchard has been a fixture in state politics for decades; he now faces Democrat Vincent Gregory, a former state senator and the former president of a local police union. A major fault line is their views on cooperating with ICE: Gregory told me that he would stop Bouchard’s practice of honoring ICE detainer requests. The Detroit Free Press also flags their differing records on marijuana; Bouchard is known for his team’s raids while Gregory championed marijuana legalization.

23 and 24. Ohio | Hamilton County (Cincinnati) prosecuting attorney and sheriff

Sheriff Jim Neil, a Democrat who has attended a Trump rally, cooperated with ICE, and backed the construction of a bigger jail, lost in a primary to Charmaine McGuffey. But Neil is not going off into the sunset; he threw his support to Republican Bruce Hoffbauer, who says on his website that he wants to ramp up prosecution over “street-level crimes” such as drug offenses, which could lead to increased arrests. McGuffey, by contrast, has signaled her support for reducing the incarcerated population, and she has vowed to no longer assist ICE in detaining people.

The prosecutor race has unfolded more straightforwardly. Republican incumbent Joe Deters faces Democrat Fanon Rucker, a former judge. Deters has borrowed from Trump’s rhetoric in casting himself as the bulwark for “law and order,” whereas Rucker says he will aim to decrease incarceration and end cash bail for low-level offenses. Rachel Cohen reported in the Political Report on one of the biggest issues in the race: the death penalty. Deters has amply used it over his tenure, while Rucker says he will never seek a death sentence and supports abolition.

25 and 26. South Carolina | Charleston County sheriff and Ninth Circuit solicitor

Black Lives Matter activism has built for years in and around Charleston, and this past summer only compounded the local grievances against persistent racial inequities in the legal system. Now, two longtime Republican officials—Al Cannon, Charleston’s sheriff since 1988, and Scarlett Wilson, the chief prosecutor of the Ninth Circuit (Charleston and Berkeley counties)—face spirited challenges on Nov. 3. 

Ben Pogue, Wilson’s Democratic challenger, says he is running for prosecutor to “shut off the mass incarceration mindset” and confront “systemic racism.” This would include changing office policies, such as no longer prosecuting marijuana possession and opposing some punitive bills that Wilson has championed; it would also mean tackling broader socioeconomic disparities. “If we continue thinking about justice as criminal justice, it’s not really justice,” he said. 

Kristin Graziano, Cannon’s Democratic challenger, has made it a core promise of her campaign for sheriff to terminate the incumbent’s multiple partnerships with ICE. This would end the county’s membership in ICE’s 287(g) program. Answering an ACLU questionnaire, Graziano also committed to instruct her deputies to arrest or cite fewer people for minor offenses, but also resisted other demands such as ending the presence of deputies in public schools.

27. Texas | Tarrant County (Fort Worth) sheriff

In this county of two million, Republican Sheriff Bill Waybourn has cheered on Trump’s immigration policies, overseen a jail mired by gruesome deaths, and contracted with ICE. But this long-conservative county is trending bluer, and local groups have organized for this shift to also bring change to local law enforcement policies. This has left Waybourn vulnerable against Democratic challenger Vance Keyes, who talks about reducing the jail population and ending the partnership with ICE. Teresa Mathew previews the election in the Political Report.

28 and 29. Texas | Harris County (Houston) sheriff and Nueces County (Corpus Christi) DA

In two Texas elections, Republicans are challenging Democratic incumbents by suggesting they’ve gone too far toward criminal justice reform. The elections serve as tests for the preliminary steps some Texas officials have taken to alleviate the criminal legal system’s harms. 

First up, the sheriff’s race in Harris County. Last year, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez broke with the county’s DA and threw his support behind a drastic restructuring of the county’s bail system. County officials had negotiated this legal settlement to provide for the pretrial release, with no cash condition, of most people charged with misdemeanors. The settlement was later approved, and early indications have shown success. Still, Gonzalez’s Republican challenger Joe Danna has repeatedly denounced the bail reform, citing anecdotal but misleading examples of recidivism. 

Further south, in Corpus Christi, Mark Gonzalez drew national headlines in 2016 when, as a defense attorney sporting a “Not Guilty” tattoo, he won the DA race. Gonzalez, a Democrat, soon announced he would stop jailing people for pot possession; but the scope of his reforms came under question, including in The Appeal. Still his Republican opponent, Jon West, has mostly signaled an interest to roll back Gonzalez’s reforms. In one interview, West even rejects the premise, to which a growing number of DAs at least pay lip service, that the criminal legal system’s punishments for low-level offenses are too harsh. “Just because somebody may have a low-level drug arrest does not mean they might not be a violent person,” he said.

30. Texas | Travis County (Austin) DA

José Garza could change the game in DA elections if he prevails next month. As a labor and immigrants’ rights attorney, and a former public defender, he has pushed his platform further than others by vowing to not prosecute possession and sales of drugs under one gram. “We use our criminal justice system like a rug that we sweep our problems underneath so we don’t have to look at them,” he told me in June, shortly before he beat the incumbent DA in the Democratic primary. He also vowed to never seek the death penalty, among other commitments. He next faces Republican Martin Harry in a Democratic jurisdiction. 

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Watch also | There are many other elections all around the country.

Contested elections are brewing in many other populous jurisdictions, including prosecutorial races in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Johnson County, Kansas, Franklin County, Ohio, and Hillsborough and Merrimack counties in New Hampshire, as well as to sheriff races in Pima County, Arizona (Tucson), Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, and Fort Bend, Texas, to name only a few. And keep track of races in your backyard. 

Watch also | In Cook County and St. Louis, incumbents survived tough primaries and now face general elections

Kim Foxx and Kim Gardner, the chief prosecutors of Cook County (Chicago) and St. Louis, won on reform-minded platforms in 2016. Both prevailed in bruising primaries this year; for Gardner, this was against the backdrop of years of attacks by the GOP officials who run Missouri. Foxx and Gardner are now favored on Nov. 3 since these counties lean heavily Democratic. Advocates are pushing Foxx and Gardner to go further with reforms against incarceration in their second terms.

Watch also | Elections have been happening all year. There are already many winners.

Many candidates won primaries this year on platforms of reducing incarceration or upending law enforcement, and now they face no opponents in the general elections. They are virtually certain to secure formal victories next month.

In Arizona’s Pima County (Tucson), former public defender Laura Conover will replace a prosecutor who implemented punitive practices. In Colorado’s San Luis Valley, Alonzo Payne ousted a sitting DA in a primary; he stresses that fighting poverty is indispensable to ending mass incarceration. In New York’s Westchester County, Mimi Rocah beat an incumbent who was relying on police officers who were framing defendants; Rocah’s only general election opponent dropped out in September. In Oregon’s Multnomah County (Portland), Mike Schmidt ran on advancing decarceral policies in a state where prosecutors have been largely resistant to change; Schmidt has already taken office. In Michigan’s Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor), finally, Eli Savit ran on never requesting cash bail, amid other decarceral commitments. 

“This is a movement,” Savit told me right after his win in August. He cheered the collapse of the expectation that “the only way” to win these county elections “was to be tough on crime.” 

Nov. 3 is the next test for this movement, which is already past the point of needing to prove itself.

The post Your Guide to 30 Sheriff and Prosecutor Elections That Could Challenge Mass Incarceration appeared first on Bolts.

Ohio’s criminal legal system lays claim to many distinctions. It has the nation’s fourth highest rate of people under correctional control, due to an exceptionally large number of people on probation. Ohio is one of the likeliest states to sentence someone to death. And its prosecutors have been among the country’s most aggressive in filing homicide charges in the wake of overdoses as a punitive response to the opioid crisis.

The state’s 2020 elections for prosecutor and sheriff, though, provide few openings for voters who desire to change this status-quo. Few candidates are running for these offices, and fewer still are focusing on issues pertaining to criminal justice reform.

Hamilton County (Cincinnati) is one of the notable exceptions. There, a prosecuting attorney known for his support for the death penalty faces off against two challengers who oppose its use, and a sheriff who has drawn protests for cooperating with ICE has a contested re-election race.

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Across Ohio’s 35 biggest counties (those with at least 70,000 residents), 23 incumbent prosecutors are running for re-election with no major-party opposition, a Political Report analysis has found. This means that no one filed to challenge them by the Dec. 18 deadline for Democratic and Republican candidates; independents can still file nominating petitions until March 16.

These 23 incumbents, who are likely to secure re-election this fall, include:

• Michael O’Malley, a Democrat in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland). He has faced calls to not request cash bail amid a crisis of jail deaths. The county is also led the nation in death sentences over the past two years.
  
• Juergen Waldick, a Republican in Allen County, who is the incoming head of the association of state prosecutors.
  
• Julia Bates, a Democrat in Lucas County, David Fornshell, a Republican in Warren County, and Victor Vigluicci, a Democrat in Portage County. These prosecutors, alongside O’Malley and Waldick, fought a bipartisan bill in 2019 to end the death penalty for people with a mental illness.
  
• Dennis Watkins, a Democrat in Trumbull County, who recently fought a court ruling halting an execution, and who defended an assistant prosecutor who wrote social media posts mocking defendants.
  
• Ryan Styer, a Republican in Tuscarawas County, which has seen a large jump in felony drug possession charges (up 290 percent from 2017 to 2018), and Paul Dobson, a Republican in Wood County (Bowling Green), who defends his frequent use of drug-induced homicide charges.
  
• Dan Driscoll, in Clark County, and Melissa Schiffel, in Delaware County. Both Republicans, they were appointed to fill vacancies in 2019 and have not yet faced voters.

It is “hard to find candidates willing to go against the grain,” said LaTonya Goldsby, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Cleveland. Regarding Cuyahoga County, home to more than one million people, she regretted that “no one has come forward to challenge the status quo… We have to continue to organize and demand accountability from our elected officials.”

Sheriff elections are barely more competitive. Just 13 of Ohio’s 35 biggest counties with a sheriff’s race drew multiple candidates, versus 10 for prosecutors.

Butler County’s Richard Jones may be the most notable sheriff to draw no challenger. He is an advocate for arming teachers, he is the only Ohio sheriff to have contracted into ICE’s 287(g) program, which authorizes local law enforcement to act as immigration agents, and he has refused to equip his deputies with naloxone, a life-saving overdose antidote.

The Political Report has compiled a list of candidates who filed for prosecutor and sheriffs in Ohio’s 35 most populous counties.

Even in counties with a contested election for prosecutor, many candidates are running on ensuring continuity or on their prosecutorial experience, not on proposals to substantially transform the criminal legal system.

The Political Report contacted a dozen prosecutorial candidates to ask what changes, if any, they would make to their county’s prosecutorial practices and whether they saw “significantly reducing” incarceration as part of the rationale of their bids. Most either did not answer or else downplayed their interest in decarceration. Robert Gargasz, a Republican candidate running in Lorain County, rejected the notion that the incarceration rate is too high.    

In Franklin County (Columbus), the state’s largest jurisdiction, longtime Republican prosecutor Ron O’Brien is seeking re-election and his sole challenger is Democrat Gary Tyack, a retired judge who has no campaign website as of publication. In answer to the Political Report’s request for comment on his policy views, Tyack replied via email that he was “not inclined” to answer, and then listed his professional experiences. He added, “I tried many cases, including death penalty cases.” The Appeal reported in December on O’Brien’s propensity to seek the death penalty. 

Still, there may be important criminal justice reform conversations in some Ohio counties this year. 

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Death penalty is at issue in Cincinnati: Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters, a Republican serving in a blue-leaning county, is closely associated with capital punishment. Now he faces two Democratic challengers who both say they oppose it. 

Fanon Rucker, a former judge, said in November that he would not seek death sentences if elected. “I cannot see a circumstance, with all the inequities that we have in the system, that I would pursue a death penalty case,” he said.

Gabe Davis, a former federal prosecutor, told the Political Report this week that “the death penalty is simply too high a price to pay, and I do not support its use.” He said it “does not deter violent crime” and “is often used in a discriminatory and inconsistent fashion.”

Rucker and Davis both told the Political Report that they were running with an eye to advancing decarceration. “Reducing our prison and jail population is a tenet of this campaign,” Rucker said in an email through a spokesperson; he added that one tool for “decreasing mass incarceration” is “eliminating cash bail for nonviolent and low-level drug offenses.” Davis outlined a similar goal to “reduce incarceration rates in a meaningful way” by “reforming bail and expanding alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders.”

Rucker and Davis face off in the March 17 Democratic primary, and the winner will face Deters in November. The Political Report will return to this election in the months ahead.

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Cincinnati has a major sheriff’s race, too: Jim Neil, the Democratic sheriff of Hamilton County who has toyed with support for President Donald Trump, has faced protests for cooperating with ICE; Neil has honored ICE detainers, which are requests by the federal agency that people suspected of being undocumented immigrants remain detained beyond their scheduled release. 

In the Democratic primary in March, Neil will face challenger Charmaine McGuffey, who served as director of the county jail under Neil from 2012 to 2017; McGuffey subsequently filed a lawsuit alleging that she was facing retaliation for bringing up complaints about excessive use of force. McGuffey has said she is running to promote more rehabilitative policies in the jail. The Political Report will return to this election and what this might mean in the months ahead.

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In Ashtabula County, a test of the impact of the opioid crisis: Colleen Mary O’Toole, a Republican and a former judge running for prosecutor in Ashtabula County (northeastern Ohio), says the opioid crisis has expanded the space for criminal justice reform.

“Everybody in Ashtabula knows someone who is strung out on drugs,” O’Toole told the Political Report. “It has changed the hearts and minds of people who historically would have said, ‘Lock them up.’ It’s taken the other, and it has put them in the house. Ten years ago I walked into a room and they were like, ‘You’re the judge, you’re going to lock them up right?’ Now they’re like, ‘How are you going to help my cousin?’”

She said she would implement changes to “shift away from incarceration” for people with drug addiction issues. She added that “21st century justice” requires other ways to reduce incarceration, including “eliminating cash bail for low-level offenses,” though she described this as a long-term goal, and not an immediate commitment. Prosecutors elsewhere have adopted policies of not seeking financial conditions for pretrial release.

Two other candidates are running in the Republican primary; the winner will face Cecilia Cooper, a Democrat who was appointed prosecutor in late 2019. Cooper did not respond to a request for comment on her own views on the opioid crisis and on whether she aims to lower incarceration.

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Can 2020 slow the trend of drug-induced homicide prosecutions? Charging people with homicide if they provide or sell drugs that lead to an overdose fuels long sentences and often targets people with addiction issues; but the practice has surged in Ohio. In fact, few counties in the entire nation have done this as frequently as Clermont County, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, according to data collected by the Health In Justice Action Lab, a project of the Northeastern University School of Law

Clermont County is now sure to see turnover since the incumbent is not running. The only one candidate who has filed to replace him, Mark Tekulve, did not respond to a request for comment on this issue. Other counties whose prosecutors have filed such charges aggressively will host contested elections: Franklin, Hamilton, Mahoning, Medina, Summit, and Stark counties. Will any of the candidates running in these jurisdictions raise concerns about this prosecutorial trend?

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Advocates eye other paths for change on issues such as cash bail: The majority of people held in Ohio’s jails are waiting for a trial, and advocates are demanding that the state curtail cash bail to shrink pretrial detention. While bail is set by judges, the issue is also in the hands of prosecutors, who make bail recommendations.

In counties where the current prosecutor is likely to remain in office beyond 2020, advocates can deploy pressure points other than an electoral challenge to demand change. In Cuyahoga County, various groups formed the Coalition to Stop the Inhumanity at the Cuyahoga County Jail last year to advance reform on issues such as cash bail. “We are more determined than ever to hold O’Malley’s feet to the fire,” said Goldsby, whose organization Black Lives Matter Cleveland is part of this effort. “By engaging in conversation with him about his role as prosecutor we hope to influence him to take a more progressive approach. 

This coalition is “a platform that gives a voice to those that are most impacted by the criminal justice system,” Goldsby added.

The post Where Are the (Reform) Candidates in Ohio? appeared first on Bolts.

State legislatures this year abolished the death penalty, legalized or decriminalized pot, expanded voting rights for people with felony convictions, restricted solitary confinement, and made it harder to prosecute minors as adults, among other initiatives.

But criminal justice reform remains an uneven patchwork. States that make bold moves on one issue can be harshly punitive on others. And while some set new milestones, elsewhere debates were meager—and in a few states driven by proposals to make laws tougher.

The Political Report tracked state-level reforms throughout 2019. Today I review the year that was—by theme and with seven maps. And yes, each state shows up.

Death penalty

While the Trump administration is attempting to restart executions, momentum built against the death penalty at the state level. Five states restricted, halted, or repealed the death penalty over a 10-month period that began in October 2018, when the Washington Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and converted the sentences of the people on its death row. 

Then, in March of this year, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, imposed a moratorium on executions. Prosecutors can still seek death sentences, though, and people remain on death row. 

New Hampshire abolished the death penalty in May, becoming the 21st state to do so. This was a hard-won victory for death penalty abolitionists, who overcame a veto by Republican Governor Chris Sununu with no votes to spare in the Senate thanks to significant gains in the 2018 midterms. 

In June, the New Mexico Supreme Court converted the sentences of the last two people on the state’s death row. (New Mexico abolished the death penalty 10 years ago.)

Finally, in July, Oregon considerably narrowed the list of capital offenses. This is not retroactive, and leaves 30 people on death row; advocates have asked the governor for commutations.

Other states considered abolition, and Wyoming came the closest—just a few votes short in the state Senate. Also: In Ohio, a bill to ban the death penalty for people with mental illness stalled in the Senate after passing the House; and legislation to require unanimous juries in Missouri failed. Arkansas was a rare state to adopt a law conducive to the death penalty; it made it a felony punishable by up to six years in prison to “recklessly” identify the makers of drugs used for an execution. 

Parole and early release

The movement against the death penalty was accompanied by a nationwide push against death by incarceration, namely sentences that leave people virtually no chance of ever being released. 

In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, reformers championed bills to abolish sentences of life without the possibility of parole; these bills would have guaranteed that everyone will be at least eligible for release after some lengthy period of incarceration. They did not pass, but they expanded debates around long sentences. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, commuted the life sentences of eight people this month, reviving a power that had ground to a halt.

Oregon abolished juvenile sentences of life without the possibility of parole, namely for acts that people committed as minors. This increased the number of states that have repealed those sentences to 22 (plus Washington D.C.). But similar bills failed elsewhere, from Democratic-run Rhode Island to Republican-run South Carolina. Oregon’s law also confronted other types of lengthy sentences, creating new opportunities for early release or a revised sentence for people convicted of offenses they committed as minors. This is not retroactive, though, and state advocates are asking lawmakers to revise that.

In Illinois, which eliminated its parole process in 1978 and left many to spend decades in prison with no opportunity for release, a new law changes that paradigm: It will make most people convicted of offenses they committed before the age of 21 eligible for parole. While the law is narrow, advocates told me in April that they see it as a jumping-off point.

Hawaii came close to amplifying these efforts. But Governor David Ige, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to let people suffering from a terminal or debilitating illness request a medical release. 

Youth justice

In 2019, a pair of laws cut the number of teenagers who will be tried as adults. The youth justice system, despite major problems of its own, has a comparatively rehabilitative outlook.

First: mandatory prosecutions. In Oregon, a wide-ranging law repealed all requirements that some minors be prosecuted as adults. Such mandates triggered long sentences for teenagers above 15. (Advocates clinched a supermajority they had long sought for this reform, in a dramatic sequence.) While Florida also ended mandatory adult prosecutions this year, Oregon’s law took another major step: Rather than empower district attorneys to solely decide when to try minors as adults, it forces them to first obtain a judge’s approval. 

Second: age eligibility. Michigan raised the age until which teenagers can be in the youth system by one year, to 18. Until now, the state treated every 17-year-old as an adult. Michigan prosecutors retain wide discretion to transfer them into adult court, however.

Michigan’s reform left only three states that have passed no law raising the age to 18 (Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin); each state saw unsuccessful efforts to change that this year. But in some states, the debate has already moved ahead, and advocates are asking why being a day over 18 should cut off access to the youth justice system. In 2016, Vermont passed a law to steer some people up to age 21 to its juvenile system. This year, Massachusetts debated a similar bill with support from three of the state’s DAs; and Illinois passed an early-release law that atypically used 21, rather than 18, as its cutoff point.

Also this year: North Dakota raised to 10 from 7 the age at which children can be referred to the juvenile system, Maryland made it harder to detain children under the age of 12, New York made it easier for 16- and 17-year olds to stay in family court, and Washington restricted the detention of children over noncriminal acts like truancy. 

Drug policy

Marijuana legalization reached a new milestone in 2019: Illinois became the first state to create a regulated pot industry legislatively. Until now, this had only been done via popular initiatives.

Illinois also set up a process for people to get old marijuana convictions expunged, and adopted measures to help them enter the pot industry (though advocates warned these are insufficient); some of the revenue will be redistributed to areas with a high share of people with convictions. Here as elsewhere, advocates called such equity provisions essential to repairing some of the harm caused by prohibition, especially against African Americans.

Other states also reformed their marijuana laws to varying degrees. Hawaii, New Mexico, and New York decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. North Dakota reduced penalties, and removed jail time for first-time offenses. And Florida repealed its ban on smokable medical marijuana. But in Texas, and elsewhere, promising reform efforts stalled.

Colorado and Oklahoma led the way when it came to drug reforms beyond marijuana. 

Democratic-governed Colorado made possession of most drugs a misdemeanor rather than a felony, which will reduce penalties and sentences going forward. (Advocates also prioritized a “defelonization” bill in Ohio, though it has yet to move.) Oklahoma already adopted this “defelonization” change in a 2016 referendum; this year, lawmakers made it retroactive. This reform is significant: Republican-governed Oklahoma is only the second state to retroactively defelonize drug possession, after California. This will reduce the existing prison population. Hundreds of Oklahomans quickly became eligible for release.

Alaska was a rare state to take a more punitive turn, rolling back earlier reforms to once again make drug possession an arrestable offense. A bill passed by Virginia’s GOP-run legislature to make it easier to prosecute overdoses as homicides was vetoed by the state’s Democratic governor.

Also: In states like Maine, Idaho, and Nebraska that expanded their Medicaid programs, and where lower-income individuals will have stronger access to health insurance, proponents cast the expansion as a way to combat the opioid crisis and better connect people to treatment for substance use. Kansas’s new governor, Democrat Laura Kelly, called for Medicaid expansion to “ease the unsustainable burden on our … criminal justice system;” her push has yet to succeed.

Prison conditions

New Jersey adopted the country’s strictest law against solitary confinement, setting a limit of 20 consecutive days and 30 days over a 60-day period. But this remains beyond the United Nations’ “Nelson Mandela Rules,” which bar solitary for more than 15 consecutive days. 

Advocates pushed for similar legislation in New Mexico and New York. It was not taken up in New York. And in New Mexico, which has high rates of use of solitary confinement, legislative leaders considerably weakened the bill. The state did adopt important restrictions on the use of solitary against pregnant women, minors, and people with disabilities. Connecticut failed to set another major milestone: A bill that would have made it the first state with free phone calls from prisons derailed after a telecommunications corporation lobbied against it.

These events captured the difficulty of getting lawmakers to care about prison conditions. Some reforms that passed exemplify the low bar. “Things we didn’t know needed to be banned,” Vaidya Gullapalli wrote in The Daily Appeal when Oregon banned the use of attack dogs on people in prison.

Perhaps the lowest bar of all: Alabama prohibited its sheriffs from personally pocketing public money allocated to feeding people held in county jails. They could do so legally until now.

Prison gerrymandering 

Nevada and Washington adopted laws to end prison gerrymandering, which counts incarcerated people at their prison’s location rather than at their last residence for purposes of redistricting. The practice inflates the power of predominantly white and rural areas, where prisons are often located. 

Still, despite the backlash against skewed census counts and against gerrymandering, only six states have ended this practice. The clock is ticking, since states draw new maps in 2021.

Rights restoration and felony disenfranchisement

State politicians confronted felony disenfranchisement with new urgency in 2019, in the wake of Florida’s historic Amendment 4, which inspired advocates around the state this year, and of the 2018 prison strike, whose organizers demanded voting rights for people in prison. 

Florida and Kentucky, two very restrictive states that were each enforcing lifetime voting bans against hundreds of thousands of residents with felony convictions, promoted rights restoration once people complete a sentence. Florida implemented Amendment 4, restoring the voting rights of most people who finish a felony conviction. But state Republicans narrowed implementation in May by requiring payment of outstanding court debt, setting off legal and political battles.

In Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear won the governor’s race and then promptly restored the voting rights of people who complete sentences for felonies classified as nonviolent. Tens of thousands of people who have completed their sentences will remain disenfranchised; still, 4 percent of Kentucky’s population regained the right to vote with just one stroke of the pen. 

Beshear’s order leaves Iowa as the only state that enforces a lifetime voting ban over all felony convictions; legislation to reform that rule had momentum, but died in the Iowa Senate. Mississippi’s legislature similarly ignored a slate of bills that would have eased its harsh voting rules.

Three states went further to decouple voting and the criminal legal system: They enfranchised all voting-age citizens who are not incarcerated, including if they are on probation or on parole. 

Only one state had passed such a reform this past decade (Maryland). But Colorado, Nevada, and New Jersey all did so this year. This brought the number of states that allow all adult citizens who are not incarcerated to vote to 18. (That number includes Maine and Vermont, where people can also vote from prison; they also can in Puerto Rico.) Also: Louisiana implemented a 2018 law that lets some people vote while serving a sentence. The secretary of state did not play an active role informing newly-enfranchised people of their rights, leaving the burden of outreach on grassroots groups.

In some states, advocates focused on ending felony disenfranchisement. This would end the practice of stripping people with felony convictions of their right to vote, including if they are in prison. Lawmakers in eight states plus Washington D.C. filed legislation to that effect. In Hawaii and New Mexico, these bills advanced past a committee; that was already historic since reform on this issue has traditionally been more incremental. 

Also: Illinois adopted a law requiring prisons to better inform incarcerated people of their right to vote upon their release. On a parallel issue, California ended its ban on people with felony convictions serving on juries once they have completed their sentences.

Immigration and local law enforcement

In Illinois and New Jersey, Democrats prohibited county governments from entering what may be the most visible form of partnership with ICE: its 287(g) program, which authorizes local law enforcement to act as federal immigration agents within county jails. 

These two states join California as the only state to take such a step. This reform did not advance in other Democratic-governed states like Massachusetts and New York, both of which have state or local agencies with 287(g) contracts. In fact, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, threatened to veto such a ban, citing the value of local control.

Another major front regarding local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE was the legality of “detainers,” which are ICE’s warrantless requests that jails keep detaining people beyond their scheduled release. Colorado Democrats adopted a law that forbids honoring detainers; in New Jersey, Democratic Attorney General Gurbir Grewal did the same, though he allowed for exceptions. Inversely, a law championed by Florida Republicans mandates that local law enforcement honor ICE requests; a full-throated effort by the North Carolina GOP to do the same failed because of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto.

Also: Colorado, New York, and Utah cut the maximum sentence for some or all misdemeanors by one day (from 365 to 364). This seemingly-small tweak will shield some people from deportation because noncitizens sentenced to at least one year of detention risk deportation. 

Past records and expungement

Beyond their immediate sentences or fines and fees, involvement with the legal system restricts people’s access to housing, transportation or employment. In response, some states expanded opportunities for people to expunge their criminal records. 

Take Delaware, which newly gave people the opportunity to expunge some convictions without first obtaining a pardon. Or West Virginia, which expanded eligibility to cover some felonies. 

But most people eligible for expungement do not seek one, as the process is costly and burdensome. As such, one of the year’s important trends is the spread of “Clean Slate” laws that automate parts of the expungement process, shifting the burden onto the government. 

After Pennsylvania became the first state to adopt such a law in 2018, Utah followed suit this year. California, besides starting to implement a law that automatically clears pot convictions, expanded automation this fall. (California’s Clean Slate law is not retroactive, unlike those of Pennsylvania and Utah, but its law is the only one to extend eligibility to some felony convictions.) Michigan and New Jersey have also begun the process of adopting Clean Slate laws.

Elsewhere, lawmakers lessened the tremendous impact that court debt has on the lives of people who cannot afford to pay it. Montana led the way, halting the suspension of driver’s licenses over a failure to pay fines and fees, a practice that can trigger mounting legal and economic hardships; Tennessee and Virginia passed more modest versions of this legislation. 

California advocates were unsuccessful in their push for a bill that outright banned many fees; Newsom vetoed another bill that would have required judges to determine people’s financial ability before imposing fines and fees. In Florida, Republicans tied state politics more tightly to financial obligations by subordinating rights restoration to repayment of fines and fees.

Finally, responding to studies showing that restricting the residency of people convicted of sexual offenses is isolating and fuels homelessness, the GOP-run Wisconsin legislature unanimously passed a bill repealing those restrictions. But Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the bill.

And there’s more

On pretrial procedures, New York adopted two major changes: It ended the use of cash bail for people charged with misdemeanors and some felonies; it also required that DAs share evidence like witness statements within 15 days of a defendant’s first court appearance. These reforms’ implementation is a major question heading into 2020 given the resistance of many prosecutors. Also, Colorado prohibited cash bail in low-level cases, and required bond hearings within 48 hours of arrest.

On policing, a California law restricted the circumstances in which police officers can use deadly force, though some advocates questioned the reform’s scope. California also adopted a three-year moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology in body cameras. And New Jersey mandated that all cases of people killed by police be investigated by the attorney general rather than prosecutors.

On sentencing, proponents of reduced sentences had high hopes in Arizona but reforms either died in the legislature or were vetoed by Republican Governor Doug Ducey. By contrast: North Dakota repealed some mandatory minimums, California ended an automatic enhancement statute, Washington slightly narrowed its three strike law, and Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings, a Democrat, overhauled sentencing guidelines. In South Dakota, the legislature defeated a tough-on-crime push to increase prison admissions.

On probation, Minnesota and Pennsylvania considered proposals to cap the length of probation, whose burdens often trip people up on small violations. But Pennsylvania lawmakers gutted the bill so much its champions turned against it; the Minnesota proposal never moved forward in the legislature, but its sentencing commission is now considering adopting it administratively.

On exonerations, a new Indiana will provide exonerated individuals $50,000 of restitution for each year they were incarcerated—but only if they agree to forego all litigation against the state. 

On prosecutors, some lawmakers took steps for DAs to stop operating a black box. Connecticut became the first state to require that prosecutors collect an extensive collection of data about the decisions they are making. Louisiana reduced DAs’ power to jail victims of sexual offenses or domestic violence to compel them to testify. And California barred plea deals in which DAs ask defendants to forfeit hypothetical future rights, in response to a strategy that San Diego DA Summer Stephan was implementing. 

On asset forfeiture, finally, Arkansas adopted the unusual rule of requiring that individuals actually be convicted of a felony before having their assets seized. And while it looked like Hawaii would do the same amid significant problems in the state’s system, Ige vetoed the bill.

Preparations are already well underway for 2020 legislative sessions, whether in Virginia, where newly-empowered Democrats are unveiling their agenda, in Maryland, where change in legislative leadership may make criminal justice reform more viable going forward, or in New York.

The post From Marijuana to the Death Penalty, States Led the Way in 2019 appeared first on Bolts.

When they launched their campaigns for prosecutor, the two Democrats running to replace the retiring Madison County state’s attorney both touted their experience working in his office as a core element of their appeal. “I was a prosecutor for almost 40 years, working in all departments through those years,” one said. “I have successfully prosecuted everything from traffic cases to murder cases” since starting “out in the office 15 years ago,” said the other. The sole GOP candidate in this southwestern Illinois county cites his background as a military prosecutor and assistant U.S. Attorney.

This is a frequent template for prosecutorial elections. Candidates compete over who has the longest or broadest experience prosecuting cases, glossing over the question of how they are prosecuting cases—and how their vast discretion shapes who is charged and with what severity.

But Junaid Afeef, running in populous Kane County, in the Chicago suburbs, instead put forth his work as a former public defender and civil rights attorney as a sign he would approach the job of state’s attorney differently. 

“By having actually worked with the individuals who are brought into the system, usually people of color, you get to see the realities of the individuals that are fodder to the system,” he told the Political Report. “It provides you with a sense of perspective, compassion, that if you’ve never represented somebody like that you would never understand.” Asked how this affects how he views the prosecutor’s role, Afeef said it makes him want to “look upstream and say the reasons people engage in antisocial behavior has a lot to do with the trauma that they have experienced in their lives, and that trauma is the result, in many experiences of poverty and a broken system. If we want to create real reforms, we need to look upstream and address those problems.”

In neighboring DeKalb County, candidate Anna Wilhelmi told the Political Report that as a former public defender and defense attorney, she witnessed the criminal legal system’s racial patterns—it’s the “new Jim Crow,” she said—and that this primes her to not “just go with the flow” of how prosecution has conventionally looked. 

“Why are we incarcerating all these people? The only reason is institutional racism,” Wilhelmi said. She faulted, for instance, the felony-status of many drug charges, an issue some states tackled this year.

Further north, in Lake County, candidate Eric Rinehart volunteered in his communication with the Political Report that he has never worked as a prosecutor. Asked how this would shape his approach to the prosecutor’s role, he said in a written message that it attunes him to “everyday failures.” “For many years, economic and racial characteristics have determined how victims and defendants are treated in the courthouse,” he said. “We have accepted this systemic failure for too long, and expected too little from our prosecutors when it comes to seeing the structural failures of the system.” He focused his comments on lower-level offenses specifically; he has also criticized his opponent, incumbent Michael Nerheim, for overcharging in a case in which five minors were charged with felony murder after their companion was killed by a homeowner during an alleged burglary.

Of course, having no prosecutorial background in no way guarantees that a candidate reforms the office, nor does such a background preclude changes. But in expanding what credentials are considered relevant for a state’s attorney, these candidates can at least fuel the conversation on what that office is for.

In 2019, a number of candidates with backgrounds as public defenders or defense attorneys won elections for prosecutor by running on platforms that emphasizes reform and decarceration, including Chesa Boudin in California, and Buta Biberaj, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, and Jim Hingeley in Virginia.

Afeef, Rinehart, and Wilhelmi all said they were inspired by the recent nationwide wins by reform candidates. And Afeef and Wilhelmi both affirmed that they view reducing the incarceration rate as part of their platforms. None provided a specific metric of how much they would reduce prison admissions. 

A neighboring example that may offer a useful pointer is Cook County (Chicago), where the number of people sentenced to jail or prison dropped by nearly by 20 percent in 2018 under State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, with a concurrent decline in the county’s crime rate. Cook County, which is home to more than 5 million people, also votes this year. 

The largest of the three other counties is Lake, with more than 700,000 residents. Rinehart is running as a Democrat against Nerheim, the Republican incumbent. DeKalb will also come down to the general election; Wilhelmi, a Democrat, faces GOP State’s Attorney Rick Amato.  

In Kane County, home to more than 500,000 people, Republican Joseph McMahon is retiring. The only GOP candidate is Robert Spence, a former prosecutor and judge who casts himself as a continuity candidate. The two Democrats running are Afeef and Jamie Mosser, who works as a prosecutor in the state’s attorney’s office and says she would set up new diversion opportunities for people with mental health or addiction issues. 

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These are just a few of the 102 Illinois counties with prosecutorial elections in 2020. The filing deadline for candidates to run as a Democrat or Republican passed last week, and so I looked at the electoral landscape across the 21 counties with at least 75,000 residents. 

A bare majority⁠ of these counties—11 of 21⁠—drew more than one candidate. 

Primary elections are on March 17, and the general election is on Nov. 3.

In the remaining ten counties, only the incumbent filed by the Dec. 2 major-party deadline. This most likely cuts short electoral debates about their record and policies before any campaign has gotten underway. Still, independent and third-party candidates can enter the race through June. DuPage, a Cook County neighbor, is the largest county with an unopposed incumbent; Bob Berlin, a Republican, has fought many criminal justice reforms during his tenure.

All candidates across these 21 counties can be found in our master list here. This map shows the candidates in the 11 contested elections:  

Below are some additional preliminary stakes in these largest jurisdictions. The Political Report will return to many of these races in more details throughout 2020. 

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Kim Foxx faces re-election in Cook County: In 2016, after Chicago activists organized to protest Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s handling of Laquan McDonald’s shooting, Alvarez lost to Foxx. Foxx brought changes like diversion for drug possession writ large, and her policies encouraged fewer prison sentences. The Marshall Project found she has declined felony charges in more than 5,000 cases that her predecessor would have likely charged at that level. 

A recent report by local organizations showed Foxx could do more to reform, for instance by ensuring that all prosecutors are following her less punitive guidelines. And yet, the three candidates challenging her in the Democratic primary have focused their messaging on attacking her perceived leniency. 

Will Tanzman, executive director of The People’s Lobby, a progressive Chicago organization that has endorsed Foxx’s re-election bid, described his view on the race as defense against the “reaction” of “people who are invested in the racist system of police violence and mass incarceration” and are looking to “fight back against criminal justice reforms.”

In launching his bid, former alderperson Bob Fioretti built a broad “tough on crime” case off of Foxx’s highly-visible decision to not charge actor Jussie Smollett. Her “coddling of violent criminals, shoplifting felons, and campaign contributors show a jarring and unacceptable disrespect for victims, business owners, taxpayers and police officers,” he said. Another candidate, former prosecutor Donna More, assailed Foxx in a Chicago Tribune commentary for having “lax” sentence recommendations and for not being sufficiently aggressive against “repeat offenses. “Foxx seems to see herself as a reform politician,” she wrote. 

Bill Conway, a former prosecutor, has done more to integrate talk of reform into his bid. He has said the problem with Smollett’s case is that some don’t access such outcomes. And he proposes diverting more people with addiction and mental health issues from incarceration. But Conway too depicts Chicago as a place where some people are not sufficiently punished, and he has built messaging around that picture of lawlessness. In an ad, he regrets that people who are arrested on gun charges are not staying in jail but are “back on the street by Monday afternoon.”

The Marshall Project’s article on declining in felony prosecutions found that gun charges are an exception, and Foxx herself has touted her office’s aggressive prosecution of  gun offenses. This is all despite the limits of using incarceration and extended sentences to control gun violence.

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Four open seats, seven challenged incumbents: Kane, Macon, Madison, and Winnebago are sure to have a new prosecutor since incumbents are not seeking re-election.

And incumbents face challengers in Cook, DeKalb, Lake, LaSalle, Peoria, Rock Island, and Vermillion counties.

Outside of the jurisdictions discussed above, the largest of these counties is Peoria, a county with some punitive practices where newly-appointed incumbent Jodi Hoos will face Chris McCall, a former prosecutor, in the Democratic primary. McCall cites his belief in criminal justice reform over “more of the status quo,” whereas Hoos has used a more conventional characterization of the office’s role. But McCall strongly qualifies his reforms as applying to nonviolent offenses. “I strongly believe that violent crime cannot be forgiven,” he said. Rinehart centered his platform on a similar distinction in his remarks to the Political Report. Advocates warn, though, that this is an overstated distinction and that changing approaches to all levels of crime is crucial to significantly reducing mass incarceration.

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Judicial elections are under the spotlight, too: Cook County is also hosting a hotly-contested election for the Illinois Supreme Court, a body that is empowered to shape the rules that govern the state’s judiciary and criminal legal system. (This court’s members are elected by district.) Appointed in 2018, incumbent P. Scott Neville Jr. faces multiple challengers in the Democratic primary. At least one of them, Daniel Epstein, is running on using the court’s power to change the state’s prosecutorial and sentencing practices, such as the use of forensic science. 

And that’s just one election. In Cook County alone, voters need to decide whether to retain dozens of judges in up-or-down retention elections. Last year, Matthew Coghlan became the first Chicago judge in 28 years to lose a retention election after a local coalition targeted him over his harsh sentencing record. 

“This is the first sign of the new changes we plan on pushing through Chicago over the next decade,” Maria Hernandez, a Black Lives Matter Chicago organizer, told The Appeal at the time. 

The post As Illinois Votes for Its Prosecutors, Defense Attorneys Say to Not “Just Go with the Flow” appeared first on Bolts.

Explore our 2020 portal for coverage of specific states and elections.

Next year is headlined by the re-election bid of a president whose administration keeps launching assaults against progressive prosecutors and sheriffs.

But President Trump’s fate won’t be the only test of what voters think of these assaults. Many of the nation’s most populous counties will hold high-stakes elections that will decide how much they overhaul their criminal legal systems in the years ahead. This includes Los Angeles, Cook (Chicago), Harris (Houston), Maricopa (Phoenix), Miami-Dade, and Tarrant (Fort Worth).

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Approximately 2,300 prosecutors and sheriffs will be elected across the country, according to the Political Report’s new master list of 2020 elections. 

These elections represent opportunities for the reform movement to replicate its recent successes. Criminal justice and immigration activists have upended expectations of who can win races for prosecutor or sheriff. They have helped oust incumbents with punitive records; made even punitive prosecutors want to adopt some reform rhetoric; and fueled wins for candidates who favor significant cuts to incarceration and criminalization. And in 2019, their success broke out of big cities and into suburban and rural jurisdictions.

Will those trends continue in 2020? The answer is sure to have profound policy implications. Candidates have already clashed over bail reform in Houston, cooperation with ICE in Fort Worth, the death penalty in Los Angeles, and jail conditions in Phoenix, where former Sheriff Joe Arpaio is mounting a comeback.

But 2019 was also a reminder that the movement has plenty more to surmount. In state after state, most prosecutorial elections drew just one candidate. Others attracted no one who focused on criminal justice reform; elsewhere, candidates who talked of these issues were snubbed by their own party. 

Among candidates who have won on progressive platforms, many remain cautious when it comes to policies that would actually reduce their powers and shrink the criminal legal system, rather than modify the ways its coercive force is deployed. There are signs that some candidates are proposing bolder reforms, though, for instance by clarifying areas DAs should not be involved. And with a number of incumbents elected as progressives running for re-election next year, 2020 will provide an opportunity to take stock of how transformative this wave of reform officials has really been.

Below is a preliminary preview of some of the year’s likely battlegrounds.

In the nation’s four biggest counties, incumbent prosecutors with varying records seek re-election

If you thought Queens or San Francisco were major prizes this year, wait until 2020. Four counties that are each more populous than 24 states elect their prosecutors.

In Los Angeles County, home to more than 10 million people, District Attorney Jackie Lacey has drawn criticism for failing to implement necessary reforms and perpetuating discriminatory practices, and her re-election bid is already spilling national ink because of George Gascón’s decision to resign as San Francisco DA to challenge Lacey. Both are Democrats. “We have been doing things for the past 40 years that are not only inhumane but expensive and also has not made us any safer,” he said. At least three other candidates are also running, including one—Rachel Rossi—whose background is in public defense rather than prosecution.

In Cook County (Chicago), State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is running for re-election, four years after grassroots organizing against her predecessor Anita Alvarez fueled her win. Foxx, a Democrat, has rolled out reforms meant to increase diversion and transparency; jail and prison sentences fell by 20 percent in 2018. Five candidates have filed to run against Foxx, including a number of former prosecutors; for now, opposition has come from people skeptical of reform and of her handling of the Jussie Smollett case, rather than from her left.

Kim Ogg, the DA of Harris County (Houston), is seeking a second term; she clashed with reform advocates this year for opposing bail reform, requesting to hire more than 100 new prosecutors, and trying to execute an intellectually disabled man. In Maricopa County (Phoenix), newly appointed prosecutor Allister Adel, who has aligned herself with her reform-skeptic predecessor, faces voters for the first time. Ogg and Adel have drawn multiple reform-minded challengers.

If 2019 broadened the geographic breadth of decarceration, 2020 could accelerate that trend

Under next year’s marquee elections are dozens of prosecutorial races in counties that epitomize the role that DAs have played in pursuing punitive policies, or in not holding law enforcement officers accountable.

In Miami-Dade, Katherine Fernandez Rundle is seeking re-election three years after deciding to not charge prison guards who threw a man into a boiling shower until he died; she has since repeatedly drawn attention for decisions to not press charges against police officers, including over alleged brutality. George Brauchler, the DA of Colorado’s Arapahoe and Douglas counties, is an avid death penalty proponent who has fought efforts to review juvenile life-without-parole sentences, as has Jessica Cooper in Oakland County (Michigan). Travis County (Austin) DA Margaret Moore is accused of mishandling the prosecution of sex crimes. In Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), prosecutor Michael O’Malley is facing demands that he curb the use of cash bail. In Louisiana, Orleans Parish DA Leon Cannizzaro has ramped up more aggressive prosecutorial practices toward minors, while Calcasieu Parish John DeRosier reportedly solicits gifts as a condition for diversion. 

And all prosecutors are on the ballot in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin, three states that are responding aggressively to the opioid crisis by treating many overdoses as homicides.

Next year will be a referendum on these counties’ largely punitive status quo. The same is true in the races without incumbents in Florida’s Broward County, and in Honolulu.

Elsewhere, though, 2020 will be a referendum on prosecutorial reforms that have drawn resistance from other political officials. 

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has fought with the local police union and was stymied by a local judge in her efforts to issue an exoneration. And in Orlando, Aramis Ayala, one of the most emblematic progressives elected in 2016, is not even seeking a second term in 2020 due to backlash against her opposition to the death penalty.

Other large counties, or counties where reform debates are already front-and-center, include Pima County, Arizona; Fulton (Atlanta) and Athens counties in Georgia; Lake County and Peoria County, Illinois; Washtenaw (Ann Arbor) and Wayne (Detroit) counties in Michigan; Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio; Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon; and others.

But will anyone even run?

Local elections are still frequently uncontested, even as their visibility grows. We’re likely to see more of the same during the 2020 elections.

In DuPage County, Illinois’s second largest, not a single major-party candidate filed against State’s Attorney Bob Berlin by Monday’s deadline. (Independents can still enter through June.) Berlin, a Republican in a blue-leaning suburban county, has fought criminal justice reforms.

Illinois has an early filing deadline—but this pattern may well recur across the country, as it did in 2019. This a major obstacle to those who push for reform or accountability through the polls. 

Take Wisconsin, which is electing its 71 DAs in 2020. A Political Report analysis found last year that most Wisconsin counties haven’t held a single contested election this entire decade. In fact, six of the state’s ten largest counties haven’t held a single contested election since at least 2008. “Let’s change this in 2020,” Ben Wickler, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, tweeted in October in response to this analysis. We will know after the June filing deadline whether the state has defied this historic dearth of competitiveness.

Will 2020 bring more pushback against DA associations that fight reforms?

A slate of progressives ran (and won) on talk of coalescing against Virginia’s prosecutorial association, which has promoted punitive policies. Next year carries similar stakes in Arizona and Hawaii: Prosecutors successfully blocked reforms in both states this year, so the election of officials with different views could trigger a statewide realignment. Another test is in New York: Albany County DA David Soares, a Democrat, oversaw an offensive against the proposed pretrial reforms this spring when he was president of the District Attorneys Association of New York. 

Policing and jail conditions are under the spotlight in sheriff’s elections

Joe Arpaio, the longtime GOP sheriff of Maricopa County, wants his old job back. He is running against Paul Penzone, the Democrat who beat him in 2016. As sheriff, Arpaio detained people in horrid conditions that were continually denounced for human rights abuses, operated in a facility (Tent City) he himself called a “concentration camp,” and oversaw a string of gruesome jail deaths. And he conducted street patrols that courts and government reports found amounted to systematic racial profiling.

But Arpaio’s record is only a window into the tremendous power sheriffs have over detention conditions and policing practices.

When he announced his challenge to Sheriff John Mina in Florida’s Orange County (Orlando), public defender Andrew Darling argued for supplementing attention to prosecutors with demands toward sheriffs.

“We often talk about a lot of young, progressive people running for State Attorney. But we don’t talk about that the criminal justice system actually starts before that,” he said. (Mina and Darling are both Democrats.)

Many officials whose records on policing and jails conditions have drawn criticism will be on the 2020 ballot. For example, last year in Florida’s Pinellas County, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, a Republican, cited the state’s Stand Your Ground law when he declined to arrest a white man who shot an African American. And jail deaths ought to be a major issue throughout Georgia. The Appeal reported on dismal conditions in jails run by Fulton County (Atlanta) Sheriff Theodore Jackson and DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann; both are Democrats who are up for re-election in 2020.

Where will ICE be a defining issue?

Sheriffs play a huge role in expanding or restricting ICE’s power, so immigration policy could be on the line in dozens of counties with sheriff’s races this year. In particular, sheriffs typically control whether their county joins ICE’s prized 287(g) program, which deputizes sheriffs’ deputies to act like immigration agents within jails. 

Over 50 counties in the 287(g) program as of this week also vote for their sheriff in 2020. The vast majority lean Republican, so they may be challenging for candidates who favor restricting ICE’s powers. But seven pop out as potential battlegrounds. Three voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016: Charleston (South Carolina), and Cobb and Gwinnett (Georgia). Four other counties narrowly voted for Trump in 2016 before voting for a Democratic Senate candidate in 2018: Nueces, Tarrant, and Williamson (Texas), and Pinellas (Florida).  Bill Waybourn of Tarrant County (Fort Worth), for instance, has closely aligned himself with White House rhetoric and practices. 

These seven counties combined have about six million residents. If some candidates who oppose 287(g) win in 2020, it would significantly shrink ICE’s reach in populous counties.

ICE could also be at issue in many other counties with 2020 elections: Sheriffs cooperate in many other ways, such as voluntarily agreeing to detain people based on ICE requests. Those include Democratic sheriffs like Jim Neil of Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio.

Will officials do more to shrink the criminal legal system?

Many reforms keep the criminal legal system as a central player, even as they steer resources to new programs. Some advocates are calling for much bolder moves like questioning whether law enforcement responses are necessary and targeting public authorities’ use of criminal justice as a solution to all sorts of social issues. 

“The best thing prosecutors can do for people who need services is get out of the way,” a group of abolitionist organization states in a new document. They warn of “institutions that use threat of punishment to force treatment or coerce services,” and call on prosecutors to “advocate for resources to be distributed to community organizations that already provide services and for policies that redistribute resources.” 

Boston DA Rachael Rollins drew startled reactions in 2018 when she ran on committing to simply not prosecute certain categories of offenses, rather than prosecuting them differently, or steering them toward still-coercive diversion program. But by 2019, decriminalization was a more expected part of the repertoire of the bolder progressives like Chesa Boudin in San Francisco and Tiffany Cabán in Queens. And 2020 already features conversations along those lines: Joe Kimok (in Broward County, Florida) would not prosecute sex work, and José Garza (in Travis County, Texas) would decline cases involving sale or possession of under one gram of any narcotics; few prosecutors until now have talked of declining drug cases other than marijuana.

In Houston, finally, it is the very size of a DA’s budget, rather than where the money is spent, that has become an electoral issue. Challengers Audia Jones and Carvana Cloud have both criticized the budget and staff increase requested by Ogg, the incumbent. Carvana Cloud told The Appeal this week that “more prosecutors means more prosecution. I don’t care how you spin it.” The money should be spent “to invest in education, healthcare, and housing,” Jones has said.

The post In 2020, Look at Sheriffs and Prosecutors Too appeared first on Bolts.

The 2019 elections, which come to a head in Tuesday’s general elections, have brought a newly nationalized sensibility to local races for prosecutor, a year after immigrants’ rights activism did the same for sheriffs.

Incumbent district attorneys and DA hopefuls have used these elections to look beyond their jurisdictions and forge broader decarceral coalitions. They are chipping away at the longtime truism that prosecutorial alliances are among the staunchest foes of criminal justice reform.

Two of the country’s most emblematic reform-minded DAs, Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner and Boston’s Rachael Rollins, have jumped into campaigns far from home this year in a bid to elect like-minded prosecutors. Both endorsed Tiffany Cabán, a public defender who fell just short in June in the Queens Democratic primary. Both have already met with Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a former public defender who won a June primary in Arlington, Virginia and is unopposed in next week’s general election. And both, alongside Chicago’s chief prosecutor Kim Foxx, now back Chesa Boudin, a public defender who is running to be DA of San Francisco. 

Some local candidates in Virginia, meanwhile, have cast themselves as part of a broad effort to reshape statewide practices. Dehghani-Tafti told me she hopes to be elected “with a wave of other reform prosecutors” to “transform” Virginia politics, a sentiment Steve Descano (in Fairfax) and Jim Hingeley (in Albemarle) echoed. Reform-minded candidates are running as well in Chesterfield and Loudoun counties; and some fault Virginia’s existing prosecutorial association for being a “very regressive force,” as Hingeley put it. Similarly, in some New York counties like Ulster, candidates blame their state’s DA association for fighting reform. And in Pennsylvania, within which Krasner has been largely isolated so far, a public defender is running in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) to “join forces” with Krasner. 

The scale of new statewide and nationwide alliances is the first core question to be decided in Tuesday’s general elections. (Louisiana votes on Nov. 16.) Will they add to the ranks of decarceral officials, and if so will enough be concentrated in one state to change its politics?

Virginia may have the most potential to change the game if it scales up the sort of county-level reform seen in recent years to a statewide plane. 

Reform-minded prosecutors may also gain allies in other types of officials. Virginia’s legislative races could expand the horizon of viable change just as the politics of prosecution are shifting. In Pennsylvania, Krasner is certain to gain is at least one in-state ally: Rochelle Bilal ousted the Philadelphia sheriff in the May Democratic primary with Krasner’s informal support. Bilal, who is unopposed in the general election, said then that she would would be a “partner” of the “reform effort which is presently active in Philadelphia,” alluding to Krasner’s policies.

Some local races are even drawing presidential candidates. U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both backed Cabán in the spring; Sanders also endorsed Boudin this week. One of Boudin’s opponents, Suzy Loftus, has the support of another candidate, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, whom she used to worked for. Loftus became the city’s interim DA this month when Mayor London Breed appointed her to fill a vacancy; some local groups protested Breed’s decision to bestow incumbency on one of the candidates weeks before Election Day.   

Local elections should get more attention still from federal politicians who are fond of talking about reform. After all, criminal justice and law enforcement practices are largely shaped by state and local officials. Discovery and bail, voting rights, ICE cooperation, policing practices, charging and sentencing reform, health care access—all are directly on the line in November’s elections.

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Voting rights hang in the balance. Where will Tuesday tip?

In each states this article mentions, the people most directly affected by the criminal legal system are barred from voting on Tuesday. These states disenfranchise people who are in prison for felony convictions; most also disenfranchise people on probation or parole, and in a few, these bans are permanent. The rate of exclusion is uniformly higher among African Americans, who are subject to heavier policing and prosecution, with a record 26 percent barred in Kentucky.

In Mississippi, for instance, where many formerly incarcerated people face health issues but do not qualify for Medicaid under current rules, most cannot weigh in on a governor’s race shaped by debates over the Medicaid expansion.

The future of voting rights hangs in the balance in Kentucky and Virginia, two states whose laws provide for lifetime bans, as I wrote in September. Virginia, where Democrats are trying to win control of the government, could eliminate lifetime disenfranchisement, if not guarantee voting rights for all citizens. In Kentucky, Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is running for governor on a pledge of issuing an executive order to restore voting rights to Kentuckians “who completed their sentences after being convicted of a nonviolent felony.” This could enfranchise about 140,000 people. Matt Bevin, the Republican incumbent, rescinded just such an order when he entered office in 2015. 

This issue even shapes prosecutorial races. Hingeley, the Virginia candidate, told me he would be mindful of the loss of voting rights when deciding whether to charge an offense as a felony. Hingeley, a Democrat, is challenging Albemarle County’s Republican prosecutor Robert Tracci, who joined a brief in support of a 2016 lawsuit to block an executive order restoring the voting rights of people who have completed their sentences. Two other prosecutors who supported that lawsuit were already ousted in the Democratic primaries in June.

This fall also marks the first election in which people enfranchised by Colorado and Louisiana’s brand new laws expanding voter eligibility will get to participate. 

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Will Tuesday’s elections ease the way for pretrial reform?

New York limited cash bail and mandated that prosecutors quickly disclose evidence. But state DAs are now responsible for carrying out those changes, and evidence has surfaced this week that some are undermining implementation. City & State NY reported that an assistant Nassau County DA gave presentations on how to circumvent these reforms. This captures the difference it can make whether a DA supports or opposes their goals. But in Nassau County itself, the incumbent DA, a Democrat who has pushed for punitive change to state law, is facing a Republican challenger who is even more openly critical of the state’s new reforms.

Elsewhere in the state, though, DA races feature significant contrasts on pretrial practices, as I reported in October. In Queens and three upstate counties (Dutchess, Monroe, and Ulster), critics and defenders of the pretrial reforms are facing off. 

Monroe (Rochester), the largest of the upstate counties, features a clash between DA Sandra Doorley and Shani Curry Mitchell. Doorley, a Republican, has played a leading role in raising concerns about the reforms as president-elect of the state’s DA association. Mitchell, a Democrat, faults Doorley’s “scare tactics.” In Queens, borough president Melinda Katz, who prevailed against Cabán, committed during the primary to end cash bail and institute open-file discovery; she faces Republican Joe Murray, who opposes both the pretrial reforms.

Discovery rules also loom large in Virginia, where prosecutors face lax requirements to share information, a system critics have called “trial by ambush.” Some reform-minded candidate want to strengthen their jurisdictions’ policies. “We shouldn’t be using the power of information and failure to provide as a means to convict somebody because we think that they should be found guilty,” said Buta Biberaj, the Democratic nominee in Loudoun County. 

Virginia may also tackle bail reform. Hingeley said he would never seek cash bail in Albemarle; the Prince William County candidates disagree on the issue; and Descano warns in addition about the possible racial biases of using algorithmic tools to determine pretrial detention. And the issue has played out in San Francisco as well. Boudin touts the initial role he played steering a lawsuit against the city’s pretrial detention practices. 

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Will the 2019 elections reduce charging practices and the volume of prosecutions?

The 2018 cycle’s defining policy proposal was Rollins’s pledge to decline to prosecute a range of low-level offenses. Cabán followed suit this year in promising to decriminalize sex work. Still, most candidates have largely stayed away from declination commitments this year, at least on matters other than marijuana possession (which Dehghani-Tafti, Descano, and Middleman say they would decline).

They have tended to focus on reducing the number of convictions through new pretrial diversion programs, as Scott Miles, the commonwealth’s attorney of Chesterfield County, Virginia, has done to criticism from his general election opponent. In such programs, which are typically targeted at lower-level cases, prosecutors file charges but agree to drop them if the defendant completes a series of steps, such as receiving treatment. Descano and Biberaj, among others, are now running on implementing such policies to ensure that more people do “not have that record that follows them around,” as Descano put it. In San Francisco, however, Loftus pushed back against this diversionary strategy on Wednesday, two weeks after becoming interim DA; she killed a diversion program meant to dismiss first-time DUI charges if the defendant undergoes behavioral therapy.

Some candidates also want to reduce the number of felony-level convictions by prosecuting more cases as misdemeanors. Misdemeanor charges trigger less severe, though still considerable, penalties; Hingeley says this approach would “make it more likely that a person could stay in the community.”

Drug cases get the brunt of the attention when it comes to diversion. Yet the frequent admonitions to approach addiction as a public health issue have coincided with a surge in a punitive practice: Some prosecutors are increasingly treating overdoses as homicides, which often targets people who use drugs themselves. In reporting on this issue, I identified only one DA candidate who pledges to never seek drug-induced homicide charges: Hobie Crystle, a Democrat who is running in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It just so happens that Lancaster has used this sort of charge more frequently than any other county nationwide, setting up the potential for a major policy shift. This issue also separates DA candidates in Allegheny (Pittsburgh) and Monroe (Rochester) counties, and Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

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Policing often evades reform and accountability. Can voters bring it via the polls?

Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) votes in the shadow of Antwon Rose II, a Black teenager shot and killed by a police officer who was acquitted in March. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article subsequently documented a pattern of inadequate accountability under Stephen Zappala, the county’s longtime Democratic incumbent DA. Lisa Middleman, his independent challenger, says a DA should never have the final word on whether to prosecute a police officer.

Middleman has also committed to not relying on evidence or testimony provided by police officers with a history of misconduct, as have other candidates running this fall such as Descano in Fairfax County, Biberaj in Loudoun County, and Boudin in San Francisco. Local police unions have intervened against a number of them, including in Fairfax and San Francisco. Loftus, the interim DA of San Francisco, is the former head of the San Francisco Police Commission. She is running as a reformer and supports independent investigations into misconduct, The Appeal reported in October, but local advocates have questioned her record on police violence.

Jennifer Riley Collins, Mississippi Democrats’ attorney general nominee, emphasizes a need to change police behavior at the outset. She wishes to train officers to make fewer arrests so as to free up resources for community services. And sheriffs shape policing practices, too: Jorge Amselle, running for sheriff in Warren County, Virginia, told The Appeal that sheriffs can be at the forefront of policing reform given their vast policy discretion. 

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ICE has largely avoided detection in the 2019 elections so far. Will that change Tuesday?

In 2018, longtime sheriffs abruptly lost in elections defined by their cooperation with ICE. That template did not carry over to 2019, though, a mix of absent competition and Democratic Party inattention or indifference.

The only New York sheriff who has joined ICE’s prized 287(g) program, which authorizes local law enforcement to act as federal immigration agents within a county jail, is running unopposed next week; he is a Republican sitting in a swing county. In Florida, a GOP sheriff who joined 287(g) drew a Democratic challenger who did not support leaving the program. In Louisiana’s largest parish, Democratic challengers pledged to quit 287(g) only to have prominent Democratic officials endorse the GOP incumbent, who easily won on Oct. 12. Many other Louisiana sheriffs with ICE contracts also won that day.

That leaves Prince William County, Virginia, as the main sheriff’s race where ICE cooperation is on the ballot on Tuesday. 

In this populous Northern Virginia county, the 287(g) program has led thousands to be deported since 2007 in this county, and has been fought by immigrants’ rights advocates, I wrote in June. Josh King, a Democrat, is challenging GOP Sheriff Glenn Hill. He has said that terminating this agreement would be a priority. County rules are unusually complicated, though; to achieve that goal, King would need to win alongside 287(g) critics who are running for other offices.

Also in Virginia: The sheriff of Culpeper County, the state’s only other county with a 287(g) county, is up for re-election, and a candidate running for Loudoun County sheriff is pledging to minimize ties with ICE. Elsewhere still: New Jersey sheriffs friendly to ICE face challengers in campaigns that mostly did not take off; and the sheriff of Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish was forced into an all-GOP runoff with a challenger critical of a local ICE contract.

Sheriffs have no monopoly over immigration policy, far from it. Boudin has said he would create a unit in the San Francisco DA’s office to inform defendants of the immigration effects of plea offers, and help prosecutors avoid triggering deportation proceedings. Middleman also told me she would add staff to advise on such consequences in Pittsburgh. Louisiana, conversely, could end up with a more restrictive landscape after 2019; Eddie Rispone, the Republican candidate in the gubernatorial runoff, has touted his desire for tougher immigration policies. 

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This guide only scratches the surface of Tuesday’s elections. 

In Mississippi’s Hinds County (Jackson), Jody Owens is the only DA candidate on the ballot. Owens, the former managing attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s state office, won a competitive Democratic primary on a platform of fighting mass incarceration. He faces a series of allegations of sexual harassment, Kira Lerner reported in an exclusive Appeal investigation in October.

There are also questions regarding sentencing reforms, mental health resources, Medicaid access, the death penalty (multiple Virginia candidates have pledged to never seek it), and private contractors: DA candidate Jack Stollsteimer wants to deprivatize the Delaware County jail in Pennsylvania, and a local jail’s private health-care provider is at issue in Virginia.

No matter how those issues are now settled by those permitted to vote, the 2019 elections have already shifted the politics of mass incarceration. 

Cabán came within 55 votes of the Queens Democratic nomination after committing to draw her policies from “community members that are directly impacted by them.” Other candidates are now showing one can mount a viable bid for prosecutor while, or by, confronting the realities of incarceration. Hingeley talks of incarceration as “family separation.” And Boudin tweeted this week, “Incarceration means putting a human being in a cage. … We need to stop normalizing our system of mass incarceration.” The new coalitions for decarceration signal that the system already looks anything but normal for a significant section of the public.

The post Your Guide to the 2019 Elections, in Six Questions appeared first on Bolts.