The movement to elect prosecutors intent on fighting mass incarceration has been largely associated with big cities like Chicago and Philadelphia until now. But it broke new ground on Tuesday when a wave of decarceral candidates won in suburban or rural counties across the nation. 

The Election Day results overhauled Virginia’s landscape in particular, broadening the geography of decarceration, and paving the way for advocates to scale up county-level reform into demands for statewide change.

“This is a great opportunity to band together with other reform-minded prosecutors to really move criminal justice reform, not only in our jurisdiction but around the state,” Steve Descano, who won in Fairfax County, outside of Washington D.C., told the Appeal: Political Report after his win on Tuesday night. “I’m very gratified that so many of my reform-minded colleagues will be joining me.”

Descano prevailed alongside other progressive Virginia candidates, including Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a former public defender who won in Arlington County on a platform of “dismantling” mass incarceration. Albemarle County, which surrounds but does not contain Charlottesville, elected Jim Hingeley, a longtime public defender who describes incarceration as “family separation.” 

“Ending mass incarceration was communicated as the campaign’s number one priority,” Hingeley told the Political Report. He called his win a “bellwether to test whether the progressive prosecutor movement spreads and takes root” in counties “outside Virginia’s urban crescent.” He opened the county’s public defender office in 1998, and led it through 2016.

“It’s not a moment, it’s a movement,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, tweeted Tuesday in response to Hingeley’s win. One of the country’s most emblematic reform prosecutors, Krasner has been comparatively isolated within Pennsylvania.

All three of these Virginia candidates ousted incumbents this year, two in a Democratic primary and one in the general election, an unusual feat. 

All three are also Democrats, and their wins coincide with Democrats gaining control of the state government for the first time since 1993. The legislature could tackle proposals to decriminalize pot, restrict disenfranchisement, lessen sentencing guidelines and felony thresholds, and strengthen discovery rules. For prosecutors to actively support such changes would break the traditional mold of criminal justice politics. “The Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorney (VACA) is down in Richmond every single day of session, and opposes reform after reform after reform, and these bills get killed,” Dehghani-Tafti told the Political Report in February, a pattern that mirrors the dynamic in other states.

Descano has vowed to to put together a “coalition” that would “act as a counterpoint” to VACA. “I will bring to bear the coalition I have built to go down and say, ‘Hey, legislators, you’ve heard this regressive view of the world. Let me tell you a progressive view of what justice should be,’” he said in March. Dehghani-Tafti and Hingeley have expressed similar goals. 

They could join Stephanie Morales, the commonwealth’s attorney of Portsmouth, who has drawn attention for her response to police violence, as well as two other incoming prosecutors who won hotly contested elections in suburban Virginia on Tuesday: Buta Biberaj in Loudoun County and Amy Ashworth in Prince William County. Biberaj and Ashworth also campaigned on redefining what goes into public safety and on reforming their local systems, though they staked less far-reaching positions on some key issues. Ashworth will replace the retiring Paul Ebert, who served as Prince William County’s punitive and controversial prosecutor for 51 years.

And it’s not just Virginia. Elsewhere across the country, rural and suburban electorates voted to rethink the priorities of the local prosecutor. 

In the Philadelphia suburbs, Jack Stollsteimer, a Democrat, beat a Republican DA on Tuesday and will be the next prosecutor of populous Delaware County. He proposed a 10-point “Smart on Crime” platform, and has advocated for deprivatizing the local jail. 

In Mississippi’s comparatively rural southwest corner, Shameca Collins emphasized reducing incarceration while running for DA of the Sixth District (Adams, Amite, Franklin, and Wilkinson counties). She defeated Ronnie Harper, a longtime incumbent with a history of fighting reforms, in the August Democratic primary. She was unopposed on Tuesday.

“Right now, we are one of the highest incarceration states,” Collins told the Political Report on Wednesday. “We can use that money in other areas that can benefit the communities, like education, infrastructure, and healthcare.” She mentioned a need to expand medical insurance for people who face mental health or substance abuse issues to afford treatments.

She will join Mississippi’s Scott Colom, who in 2015 became one of the main reform-minded DAs serving in a primarily nonurban jurisdiction. Colom, who like Collins is African-American, won a second term unopposed this week. A third candidate who ran on a progressive platform, Jody Owens, is set to become the next DA of Hinds County, which includes Jackson. He was unopposed in the general election. The Appeal reported in October that Owens faces a series of allegations of sexual harassment.

In Kentucky, which voted for President Trump by 30 percentage points in 2016, Andy Beshear claimed victory in the governor’s race on Tuesday. He ran on restoring the voting rights of approximately 140,000 people with past criminal convictions, and he repeated that promise in his Election Night speech. African Americans, who are subject to harsher policing and prosecution, make up a disproportionate share of the disenfranchised Kentuckians.

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These incoming officials made varying sets of commitments, such as never seeking the death penalty (a position shared by Dehghani-Tafti, Descano, and Hingeley), not prosecuting people for marijuana possession, filing more cases at the misdemeanor level rather than the more severe felony level, and reforming the bail system. Ashworth, for instance, told me she would “stop the use of cash bail to reduce the jail population.” 

Many of them share a goal of reducing the volume of convictions by setting up new or expanded pretrial diversion programs. These are programs, usually reserved for lower-level cases, through which prosecutors agree to drop cases if defendants complete a series of steps. (This contrasts with the diversion programs that provide lower penalties but require a guilty plea as a condition of access.) This lets people “not have that record that follows them around,” Descano said. 

When I asked Dehghani-Tafti what Tuesday means for reform, she outlined a manifesto of sorts. She said that it “means we are ready to consider these basic principles: not every problem needs to be criminalized; not every crime has to lead to punishment; not every punishment has to result in incarceration; and not every instance of incarceration has to be so punitive that it makes no room for rehabilitation. … I am excited to join other reformers to begin that work.”

They also made a case that current practices harm communities. Biberaj argued that the probation system fuels incarceration because it is designed to trip people up. “That doesn’t make our community safe,” she said. Descano echoed her message on Tuesday, saying, “You don’t have to choose between safety and justice.”

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The country’s most visible DA races this year did take place in some of its largest cities: New York City and San Francisco. Those grabbed the nation’s attention, due in part to the decarceral platforms of public defenders Tiffany Cabán in Queens and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. 

Melinda Katz won in Queens on Tuesday, five months after securing the Democratic nomination against Cabán, during which she was pushed to the left on issues such as bail. She has pledged to create the borough’s first conviction integrity unit. In San Francisco, Tuesday’s election remains too close to call between Boudin and Suzy Loftus, who became interim DA in mid-October. 

But it is just outside of these cities that the 2019 elections will leave their biggest marks.

“We know that if the movement is going to flourish outside of big cities, it’s going to have to work in places like Fairfax Counties,” said Descano. “I think people will see this victory, and this movement will spread to other large suburban jurisdictions across the country.” 

He added, “Yes, to some degree urban jurisdictions are different. But opponents of the movement have tried to make hay of these differences and tried to use coded language, and express language, to stop progressive reform in its tracks.” 

Descano was alluding to attempts by opponents of criminal justice reform to associate crime and reform alike with cities that are often more racially diverse. Descano’s general election opponent, Jonathan Fahey, told a radio show that electing Descano would make Fairfax “go down the road of Philadelphia.” Fahey’s bid drew support from the GOP, from the Democratic prosecutor Descano ousted in the primary, and from police unions. In Arlington, just south of Washington D.C., the defeated prosecutor Theo Stamos told The Appeal in May that racial disparities in local prosecutions were due to “folks coming from other areas in the region.” And in Loudoun, Biberaj faced attacks for “coddling criminals” with her reform proposals. “The theme for this year is overcoming backlash,” said Taylor Pendergrass, a senior campaign strategist for the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice, in a written message to the Political Report.

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There were exceptions to this expanding base for decarceral candidates, however. 

In upstate New York, challengers who ran on reform platforms fell short. Monroe County DA Sandra Doorley (the president-elect of the state’s DA association), Onondaga County DA William Fitzpatrick (its former president), and Dutchess County DA William Grady (a longtime foe of reform) won new terms; all are Republicans. This means that many of the New York DAs who have resisted the state’s new pretrial reforms will now be in charge of implementing them.

In Virginia’s Chesterfield County, south of Richmond, the state’s prospective progressive alliance lost a potential member. Democratic incumbent Scott Miles lost to Republican Stacey Davenport, who ran on ending a pretrial diversion program set up by Miles. Miles will have served for only one year. He faced pushback during that time from local law enforcement, a reminder to incoming prosecutors that they will keep facing the same forces they just defeated at the polls.

In Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, Stephen Zappala, a longtime DA with a punitive record, won Tuesday against public defender Lisa Middleman, who wanted to overhaul the local system. Middleman, an independent, did very well within the city of Pittsburgh, but poorly outside of the city limits. Zappala benefited from the same pattern in the Democratic primary.

That said, things shifted even in these jurisdictions. This year alone, Zappala twice faced competitive challenges after not facing a single opponent for 20 years. And Middleman’s success in Pittsburgh signals strength for the local progressive movement since she was running as an independent while Zappala had the nominations of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Grady, who was seeking a ninth term in Dutchess County, won by just one percentage point. And the DA election remains far too close to call in neighboring Ulster County, where one of the candidates believes the state needs “a more progressive view” than currently exists in the DA association.

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For the decarceral movement, though, candidate recruitment remains a major hurdle to growing a geographic base beyond the biggest cities. 

Despite conservatives’ advocacy for reform legislation in red states like Oklahoma, most people who ran for prosecutor on a reform platform this year did so as Democrats. That limits the scale of change in rural counties where GOP candidates are favored. Brad Haywood, chief public defender of Arlington County and executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, a nonpartisan organization, noted that “whether the movement expands beyond big cities” hinges on ideologically varied messaging and candidates. 

Moreover, in each of the states that held multiple elections for prosecutor this year—Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—the majority of jurisdictions drew only one candidate. In 50 of Virginia’s 70 counties with fewer than 50,000 residents, one name appeared on Tuesday’s ballot: the incumbent prosecutor’s.

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The Ascension Parish sheriff’s department detained a U.S. citizen as part of an immigration hold for four days despite a court order that he be released, according to a lawsuit by the ACLU of Louisiana. The ACLU alleges that this is part of a systematic policy to target Latinx individuals. Sheriff Bobby Webre, who was not yet in office during these specific events, told The Advocate that he would mount a “rigorous defense” of his department.

Moses Black Jr., however, takes issue with current practices. He is challenging Webre in the Oct. 12 sheriff’s election.

“The ACLU is doing the right thing bringing this to light,” he told the Appeal: Political Report this week. Local authorities are participating in a nationwide “all-out war on Hispanics,” he said, because “they can get away with it.” Webre’s office did not answer a request for comment on the ACLU’s allegations; Byron Hill, the third candidate in the race, also did not respond.

Louisiana will hold 63 elections for sheriff this fall. These could impact the reach of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the scale of immigration enforcement and detention in the state.

Sheriffs nationwide have the authority to enter into various partnerships with ICE, both formal and informal. In Louisiana, many have taken full advantage over the past year to help the federal agency identify or incarcerate undocumented immigrants.

As Louisiana’s incarceration rate plunged in recent years, local agencies have rapidly entered in new contracts to rent now-vacant jail space to ICE, considerably expanding the federal agency’s capacity to detain immigrants. In addition, three sheriff’s departments have now joined ICE’s 287(g) program (two of them this year), which authorizes local deputies to act as federal immigration agents.

“This is a crisis happening in our own backyards, betraying the state’s commitment to decarceration and exposing thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers to brutal and dehumanizing conditions,” Alanah Odoms Hebert, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, told the Political Report. Investigations have found that people detained by ICE in the state are held in poor conditions.

Black, the sheriff candidate, faults the underlying racial pattern in the resilience of incarceration, and links amplified immigration enforcement to the criminal legal system’s disparate impact on African Americans. “I see Blacks who go to jail for lower offenses, and what they’re trying to do to Hispanics who come to the United States to make a better life for themselves and their families—I see that right now the government is trying to prevent that,” he said, adding that part of his platform is to reduce arrests by issuing more summons instead. “They’re trying to send Hispanics to Mexico or Honduras and put Black men in jail. The United States is made for everybody.”

“It’s a business for them,” he added. ICE pays counties more money to detain an immigrant than the state pays them to incarcerate someone with a criminal conviction, according to the Times-Picayune.

The sheriff’s elections this year offer a platform for immigrants’ rights advocates to call these policies into question. There is an election in every parish except Orleans (New Orleans), which is on a different schedule.

“These sheriffs absolutely need to answer to voters about their role in this crisis that diverts resources away from other public safety priorities and makes everyone less safe,” Odoms Hebert said. She called on candidates to curb cooperation with ICE, starting with 287(g). “First it is vital that sheriffs reject the harmful 287(g) agreements that undermine public trust and weaken the effectiveness of local law enforcement. But much more broadly, local law enforcement needs to respect the rights of the people they’re sworn to serve: that means taking steps to combat racial profiling and racially-biased policing, and building greater trust with these communities.”

On 287(g), eyes are on East Baton Rouge

Three Louisiana parishes have joined the 287(g) program, which deputizes sheriffs’ deputies to research the immigration status of people they book in the parish jail and arrest those they suspect of being undocumented. Sheriffs have the power to terminate existing agreements.

The largest is East Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s most populous parish and also one of its least conservative as Hillary Clinton won it by 9 percentage points in the 2016 presidential race.

The Baton Rouge Immigrants’ Rights Coalition organized a rally last week demanding that the sheriff’s office terminate 287(g). Republican Sheriff Sid Gautreaux III renewed the contract earlier this year amid a significant increase in ICE arrests in the parish.

Dauda Sesay, a member of the Baton Rouge coalition and president of the Louisiana Association for Refugees and Immigrants, told the Political Report that the parish’s relationship with ICE causes fear among immigrant residents with whom he interacts, regardless of their status. “With the stress that comes with moving to a new land, and us refugees we have this trauma in us, and all of what is happening at the national level, and now we find out that the parish is using this policy to partner with ICE: all of this adds to the trauma, it adds to the fear,” he said. Sesay, who came to the United States as a refugee from Sierra Leone, is an advocate for refugee settlement.

He argued that people tend to not strictly differentiate between various agencies, so the sheriff’s policies color people’s perceptions of all local law enforcement, making it less likely for them to report crime or interact with police. “When you have that much fear in the community, public safety is at risk,” he said.

Stephanie Dugas Braswell, an organizer with Indivisible Louisiana Capitol Region, a group that helped organize last week’s rally, echoed Sesay’s point. “How are people supposed to put their trust in that when their family and friends are being deported?” she asked. Gautreaux did not answer a request for comment on this criticism.

East Baton Rouge Parish’s membership in 287(g) is now at stake in this fall’s election.
Two Democratic challengers, Mark Milligan and Carlos Jean Jr., are challenging Gautreaux. If none of the three reaches 50 percent in October, the top two will move to a November runoff.

Each challenger told the Political Report that they oppose the 287(g) program. Milligan wrote in an email that 287(g) is a “violation of Civil rights, and civil liberties.” “We can not afford to harass potential ‘Legal Citizens’” while trying to identify “undocumented residents,” he added. He also said he would refuse to honor ICE requests that he detain people beyond their release date. Milligan said that these administrative requests, known as detainers, violate due process.

Jean said he “would discontinue the 287(g) program on my first day” because it is hurting “public safety and community trust.” Jean added that he would allow ICE to be stationed at the parish jail to check immigration status, however. He did not respond to a follow-up question on whether he would honor detainers.

Ouachita and Terrebonne are the two parishes that newly joined 287(g) earlier this year. Ouachita Parish Sheriff Jay Russell, who signed the agreement, is now running for reelection unopposed. The Terrebonne Parish sheriff who signed the contract, Jerry Larpenter, is not running. Of the seven people running to replace him, the only one who answered my request for comment, Bubba Bergeron, said he favored maintaining the 287(g) contract.

Other jurisdictions with 287(g) are holding contested elections this fall, including in New Jersey and in Virginia.

Detention contracts have multiplied

While sheriffs who have joined 287(g) actively help ICE identify people who may be undocumented, many sheriffs’ departments have struck separate detention agreements: They provide jail space for ICE to detain people it arrests elsewhere in exchange for payments.

These can be lucrative arrangements. Tim Lentz, a Republican who is challenging St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith, a fellow Republican, told the Political Report that he takes issue with the financial considerations that are ballooning incarceration in his parish. Lentz said he wants to shrink the jail population. “I have campaigned on the promise of reducing the current size of our jail by half,” he said in a written message.

“Unfortunately the jail has become a for profit prison with over half of the population either state or federal inmates.  The ICE contract will be closely reviewed after election.”

Still, these contracts have multiplied over the past year. “It seemed that Louisiana was ready to move away from its dependence on mass incarceration,” Jamila Johnson, a senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Advocate in May. “It’s disheartening to see that it continues to rely heavily on it through its switch to the mass incarceration of civil detainees.”

The Political Report contacted candidates in Allen, Concordia, Natchitoches, and St. Tammany parishes to ask whether they would keep or end the incumbent sheriffs’ existing partnerships; no one but Lentz responded.

Elsewhere still, sheriffs who have made deals with ICE are running for re-election unopposed. They include Jackson Parish’s Andy Brown and Bossier Parish’s Julian Whittington, who runs a jail where guards pepper-sprayed ICE detainees during a protest, Mother Jones reported.

And there are other opportunities for ICE to extend its reach. New sheriffs elected in any of the state’s parishes could apply for new contracts. “We are keeping a watchful eye around the state,” said Odoms Hebert, of the ACLU of Louisiana.

“We are just asking for a handshake, an opportunity,” Sesay said. “That opportunity is to not do things that make us feel unwelcome… A welcoming city is one in which diversity is celebrated to improve the opportunities of our residents. That is simple, that is all we ask for, and we want to extend that to the whole of the state of Louisiana.”

The post In Louisiana, Sheriff Elections Will Shape ICE’s Reach appeared first on Bolts.

When it comes to Mississippi’s sky-high incarceration rate and record disenfranchisement, district attorneys are on the front lines. Their decisions as to who to prosecute with what charges loom large.

On Tuesday, two candidates won DA elections on platforms that emphasize the urgency of seeking alternatives to prison.

In the state’s southwest corner, Shameca Collins ousted DA Ronnie Harper in the Democratic primary of the Sixth District (Adams, Amite, Franklin, and Wilkinson counties). And in Hinds County (home to Jackson, the state capital), Jody Owens secured the Democratic nomination in the three-way primary to replace the departing Seventh District incumbent, Robert Shuler Smith.

Collins and Owens face no opponents in November’s general election. So they will be the next top prosecutors in their districts.

As managing attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi office, Owens oversaw lawsuits against the state’s alarming voting laws and detention conditions. “Our focus has been ending mass incarceration,” he told the Political Report last month. “When we ostracize individuals as we have in Mississippi … you’re creating a class system that district attorneys can do something about.”

Collins is a city prosecutor who led her platform with the need to promote alternatives to prison. “We have to support criminal justice reform,” she told the Natchez Democrat back when she launched her bid. “The duty of a prosecutor is not to convict, but to see that justice is done.”

She defeated a prominent figure: Harper was first elected DA in 1995, and has since vocally opposed reforms, for instance urging the governor to veto a bill expanding parole. He carried weight, as a past president and current board member of the Mississippi Prosecutors Association, the group that lobbies on behalf of the state’s DAs. “Mississippians are ready for a new direction on criminal justice that delivers more freedom and opportunity and far less incarceration,” Alesha Judkins, the Mississippi state director of FWD.us, told the Political Report. “The work ahead will be in translating that mandate to real policies that help real people.”

Theirs were the only two contested DA primaries this year. Very few of the state’s elections even drew multiple candidates this year. Scott Colom, a DA first elected in 2015 on a reform platform, is running for re-election unopposed this year.

So is Doug Evans, a DA whose misconduct was extensively documented by the podcast “In the Dark” (produced by American Public Media) and was the target of a Supreme Court ruling in June. But in Tuesday’s only contested elections, candidates interested in criminal justice reform made the most of the opportunity.

When the Political Report interviewed Owens last month, he criticized the state’s prosecutors for treating “more incarceration time” as “the only tool they have.” “There are a lot of individuals who don’t need to be in prison,” he said. “And there are certainly a lot of individuals in a state like Mississippi who don’t need to be in prison for the length of time that they are.” Instead, he explained that he would decline to prosecute marijuana possession, expand the use of restorative justice, and steer clear of the state’s harsh sentencing schemes for drug offenses. “We wouldn’t see ourselves seeking mandatory minimums or habitual sentences based on low-level drug possession charges, which could have been years if not decades previously,” he said, labeling the war on drugs a failure.

Owens made the case that such reforms would boost public safety, a connection that advocates are also drawing elsewhere. “You don’t maintain public safety solely by prosecuting individuals. To stop mass incarceration, one has to work in the community in a way which stops the cycle that feeds into this system,” he argued, referring to reentry programs and social services.

Collins’s public statements remain somewhat vague. Her website promises she will work for “fairness” and “transparency” and will “help build the community” rather than “destroy lives.” It also says she will “stand up to police misconduct” and “treat addiction as a medical issue,” the two most evocative statements in terms of her politics. But it mostly avoids pronouncements on concrete changes. Collins did not respond to a request for comment. On her website, as in the local press, she does indicate wanting to shift away from incarceration for some drug-related offenses. “Continuing to throw drug users into prison doesn’t solve the problem that we face,” she said. “We must look for new avenues to help these citizens get the treatment that they desperately need.”

Both Collins and Owens have mainly focused their promises of change on lower-level offenses. They confine reform to the first half of the overdrawn nonviolent/violent binary. This has long been a conventional staple of reform rhetoric, but some newer DAs like Boston’s Rachael Rollins and Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner have challenged it. “We can’t exclusively focus on nonviolent offenders,” Rollins said during her campaign last year.

Collins has also specified that her reform views apply to first-time offenders, another qualifier that would restrict its impact. “You can put programs in place that will reform our young men and women before they become another statistic,” she told the Nashua Democrat, but added, referring to “repeat offenders and those accused of committing violent crimes,” that “these programs will not be available to everyone. There are times when programs just cannot do the job.”

Still, if Collins and Owens bring their views into office, it could further transform the politics of law enforcement in Mississippi, and give some company to Colom.

Reform proposals have struggled in Mississippi in the past, in part because of the coordinated lobbying of reform-skeptic prosecutors. “Prosecutors don’t just drive or reduce incarceration in their own districts. They also have tremendous influence in state capitols where they weigh in on pending criminal justice legislation,” said Judkins. “Mississippi’s elected prosecutors have customarily opposed reforms to the state’s criminal justice system, but we are hopeful these newly elected reformers will join reform advocates at the capitol in calling for much needed pretrial and sentencing reforms.”

Elections in November could further grow the ranks of reformers. Michael Grace, who emphasized pre-trial diversion programs when he declared his candidacy, is challenging DA Kassie Coleman in the 10th District. And Jennifer Riley Collins, who was the ACLU of Mississippi’s executive director, secured the Democratic nomination for Attorney General. She was running unopposed in the primary, but faces a tough road in November. Her GOP opponent will be decided in a late August runoff.

Owens alluded to the impact that forming a statewide reform coalition may have in his interview with the Political Report, when he said he would promote voting rights when possible by filing charges that do not carry disenfranchising consequences instead of charges that do. “That will be one of my initiatives, with district attorneys who feel the same way,” he said. “If enough people are aware of this, we can circumvent their racist, Jim Crow-era law that continues to punish individuals for decades.”

The post Two Candidates Run on Reform and Prevail in Mississippi DA Elections appeared first on Bolts.

Virginia’s Democratic primaries shook up the state in June, when candidates running on platforms of ending mass incarceration ousted the commonwealth’s attorneys of two of the state’s biggest counties. Will voters double down in November’s general elections?

“I’m hoping that I’ll be elected with a wave of other reform prosecutors,” Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, one of those candidates, told the Political Report in February. 

Dehghani-Tafti, who defeated incumbent Theo Stamos in Arlington County, is now unopposed. But other candidates with decarceral platforms face competition. Seven of Virginia’s 10 biggest jurisdictions will host a contested election for prosecutor; most of them feature candidates who say, with varying degrees of ambition, that criminal justice reform is important to their campaign. 

These races will shape the politics of prosecution across the state, from Fairfax and Prince William in Northern Virginia to Albemarle and Chesterfield further south. Prosecutors “are in position to prioritize community partnerships and restorative justice, education, and treatment over jail sentences, and end the criminalization of poverty and the cycles of job loss, housing loss,” said Maya Castillo, the political director of New Virginia Majority Education Fund, a group involved in criminal justice reform. 

It would represent “a disruption for the systems of mass incarceration” if candidates committed to such reforms and to decarcerative goals were to win, Castillo told the Political Report.

But in dozens of smaller, rural Virginia counties that are often located in the state’s southern part —the sort of area where decarcerative reforms has lagged behind—the prospect of overhauling the legal system through the ballot box remains far-fetched because competition is absent. In 50 of Virginia’s 70 counties with fewer than 50,000 residents, the only candidate on November’s ballot is the incumbent prosecutor.

“There is no easy solution,” Jenny Glass, the political director of the ACLU of Virginia, told the Political Report. “but we definitely need to build more local power in the southwest so residents feel equipped to question these incumbents on what they are doing to reduce incarceration and racial disparities. We have been trying to make a point of heading out to places like Martinsville and Abingdon to hold member forums where we can educate folks on the issues and how they can push these candidates.”

Virginia is electing 96 commonwealth’s attorneys this year—one for each of its counties as well as some but not all of its independent cities. The Political Report has published a master list of the candidates running in each jurisdiction, and will cover races individually throughout the fall. 

What do we already know about some of these elections’ stakes—from pot and discovery to voting rights—and about the individual elections likeliest to have an impact?

Marijuana and discovery rules loom large: Virginia’s incarceration rate, which is higher than the national average, rests in part on the shoulders of commonwealth’s attorneys. They exercise great discretion on how harshly to prosecute and what sentences to seek. “For me, it does all come back to the prosecutor,” Steve Descano, who is running in Fairfax County, told the Political Report in April. “If you were to have a prosecutor who was committed to making a dent in mass incarceration and ending mass incarceration, it would be within their powers.” One of his proposals is to charge more cases at the misdemeanor level, rather than at the felony level, which carries far more severe penalties. 
“We want to see candidates making a commitment to reduce the incarcerated population in Virginia in a way that drives down the racial disparities in our criminal justice system and we want to see detailed plans and data to support those commitments,” Glass said. “These positions are also consistent with the changes that voters want to see,” she added, pointing to a poll commissioned by the ACLU that found likely voters think the system ought to change. 
Two issues loom large in Virginia. One is discovery rules. Prosecutors here face lax requirements as to what information they must share with a defendant’s legal team, a situation critics call “trial by ambush.” The state Supreme Court mandated reform effective this July, but the changes were delayed and information-sharing still hinges on good will. “I’d like to see consistency and a commitment to early and thorough discovery in all cases,” Shawn Stout, a defense attorney in Prince William County, told the Political Report.
Second is marijuana. Some commonwealth’s attorneys have announced they will stop  marijuana prosecutions, and the Attorney General has called for legalization. But resistance remains strong too. Influential prosecutors helped kill legislative reform, and local judges have blocked cases from being dropped. How candidates handle marijuana, as well as potential conflicts with other local officials, is a defining issue in this election.

Two reform candidates ousted incumbents, but November awaits for one. For Dehghani-Tafti and Descano, who laid out their proposals to overhaul prosecution during the primaries, defeating sitting prosecutors in June was the hardest part. But Descano in Fairfax, unlike Dehghani-Tafti in Arlington still faces a general election opponent, independent Jonathan Fahey. Fairfax is a largely Democratic jurisdiction, which gives Descano an edge. Fahey’s campaign has no online trace as of today, and he did not answer a request for comment about his views. 

In populous counties, competitive elections feature contrasts on reform: Jim Hingeley, the former chief public defender of Albemarle County, put mass incarceration front and center when he launched his candidacy. “People ask, why does our country put more people in prison than any other place on earth even though we know mass incarceration is harmful and does not make us safer?” he said. Hingeley is a Democrat, running against Republican Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci in a county carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 .
He is one of a series of candidates talking about criminal justice reform in Virginia jurisdictions larger than 100,000 residents. Descano told the Political Report in April that, if elected, he would he would work to put together a “coalition” of like-minded prosecutors and lobby for progressive legislation in the state capitol. This promise hinges in part on what happens in elections like these.
Scott Miles was elected prosecutor of swing Chesterfield County in a special election last year, and he has since announced changes such as not seeking jail time for marijuana possession, not treating drug possession as a felony, and curbing the use of cash bail. A Democrat, Miles is now running for a full term against Republican Stacey Davenport, who says she wishes to roll back some of the changes and who faults Miles for effectively decriminalizing certain offenses.
In Prince William County, Paul Ebert is retiring with a punitive record after 51 years in office; in neighboring Loudoun County, Jim Plowman, who authored state prosecutors’ brief against rights restoration in 2016, is not seeking reelection. While candidates running to replace them have not emulated the boldest stances of some running elsewhere in the state, contrasts have emerged on issues like cash bail, jail expansion, or the proper scope of diversion. The Political Report reported last week on Prince William County. “It is not smart to focus on prosecuting victimless crimes like drug possession or driving on suspended,” said Democratic nominee Amy Ashworth. The Political Report will return to the Albemarle, Chesterfield, and Loudoun races in months ahead.
Henrico and Stafford are the other two counties above 100,000 residents with contested elections this year. But the websites of challengers Owen Conway and Julia Dillon indicate no position on matters pertaining to criminal justice reform or decarceration as of this week; neither candidate replied to a request for comments regarding their views.

Twenty prosecutors who fought expanding voting rights are seeking re-election this fall: In 2016, 43 prosecutors filed a joint legal brief supporting a lawsuit against Governor Terry McAuliffe’s bid to end the lifetime disenfranchisement of Virginians with felony convictions. This erupted as an issue in June’s Democratic primaries. McAuliffe endorsed the challengers to two Democrats, Stamos and Ray Morrogh, who had signed on to that amicus brief. Both lost. Another Democrat who joined the lawsuit (Prince William County’s Paul Ebert) is retiring.
But November will bring no such sweep: Of the 20 prosecutors who signed the brief and are on the November ballot, 17 are unopposed. All are Republicans or independents. This leaves three incumbents who face a challenger: Republican Robert Tracci in Albemarle, Republican Paul Walther in Culpeper, and independent Diana O’Connell in Orange. Prosecutors may again try to influence statewide debates on this issue when the legislature next reconvenes.
With Democrats vying to seize control of the state government for the first time since 1993, the politics of voting rights, but also marijuana and other criminal justice reform issues, could soon change in Richmond too.

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Mississippi’s criminal legal system is under scrutiny: The U.S. Supreme Court just struck down a death penalty conviction due to prosecutorial misconduct, its prisons are on trial, and it likely now has the country’s highest disenfranchisement rate.

“There truly is a broken criminal justice system in Hinds County and in Mississippi as a whole,” said Jody Owens, managing attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Mississippi chapter. 

Owens is the latest in a wave of candidates running to be “decarceral prosecutors”: He is vying to be district attorney of Hinds County, Mississippi’s most populous (home to Jackson). The county is majority Black, and it votes predominantly Democratic. Incumbent Robert Shuler Smith is not seeking re-election. The Democratic primary, which takes place in August, will decide the election because no Republicans or independents filed to run. 

Owens talked to the Political Report last week about how he proposes to reform Hinds County. “Our focus has been ending mass incarceration,” he said of his work at SPLC, where he has litigated cases against Mississippi’s detention conditions and disenfranchisement. He added that he would retain that focus as DA. “There are a lot of individuals who don’t need to be in prison,” he said “And there are certainly a lot of individuals in a state like Mississippi who don’t need to be in prison for the length of time that they are.” 

He made the case that decarceration would boost safety by freeing up funds for social services and by breaking generational cycles of marginalization. “In my work as a civil rights lawyer, I was seeing fathers and sons both in prison,” he said, faulting prosecutors for “failing” communities by not creating programs to stop the children “from following the same footsteps.”

Owens called for expanding the use of restorative justice and mediation in cases of crimes that involve victims. Communities should be “more empowered to deal with their own conflicts,” he said, to counter those prosecutors who resort to “more incarceration time” as “the only tool they have.” He took issue with the criminalization of mental illnesses and addiction, with the use of prisons as “de facto” facilities to hold people experiencing such issues, and with the schemes that impose very harsh sentences on people with multiple drug-related convictions. He said he would not prosecute marijuana possession.

But Owens also repeatedly employed the conventional but too limiting distinction between nonviolent and violent crimes when talking about decarceration. 

Owens, who wants to be a progressive voice in statewide policymaking, called on prosecutors to use their discretion to limit the state’s harsh disenfranchisement rules. He explained that, when possible, he would file charges that do not carry disenfranchising consequences instead of charges that do. “When we ostracize individuals as we have in Mississippi—tens of thousands of individuals, permanently—you’re creating a class system that district attorneys can do something about,” he said. “If enough people are aware of this, we can circumvent their racist, Jim Crow-era law that continues to punish individuals for decades.”

Two candidates are running besides Owens. They are Stanley Alexander, an assistant state attorney general who also ran in 2015 by faulting the incumbent DA for endangering safety by being too lenient in prosecutions, and Darla Palmer, a defense attorney. The primary is on Aug. 6; if no candidate clears 50 percent, a runoff will be held on Aug. 27. 

The interview has been condensed and slightly edited for clarity.

The Supreme Court shone a spotlight on Mississippi’s legal system in June when it overturned the conviction of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime by DA Doug Evans. What lessons do you draw from this case on the power of Mississippi prosecutors, and on the possibilities for abuse that the position contains?

The Curtis Flowers trials are an example of what happens when overzealous prosecutors refuse to pay attention to all the evidence and to do justice as opposed to just trying to get a conviction. As a civil rights lawyer, I followed that case; I’ve spoken to people from the podcast. I can tell you that it’s the type of thing that gives prosecutors everywhere a bad name, the good prosecutors who believe in justice like Scott Colom who was recently elected. I think that it really shows you how dangerous it is, historically, in places like Mississippi with mass incarceration rates and an unjust criminal justice system, if prosecutor power goes unchecked.

As the managing attorney of the Mississippi chapter of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), you litigated against the state’s legal system and local law enforcement practices. Now you’re running to be one of the state’s most important law enforcement officials. What explains this transition, and what aspects of your work at SPLC would you bring with you?

Our focus has been ending mass incarceration. We have worked at the state legislature every year; we’ve been appointed to task forces by governors. Most Mississippians, regardless of their political ideology, believe that Mississippians are not bad people. Yet we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the country historically. We can blame Jim Crow, a lack of a statewide-funded funded public defense system, a lack of an indigent defense system that supports the right of individuals to have enough time with their counsel to have a serious defense. There truly is a broken criminal justice system in Hinds County, and in Mississippi as a whole. 

The transition is one in which we hope to maintain public safety by realizing that you don’t maintain public safety solely by prosecuting individuals. To stop mass incarceration, one has to work in the community in a way which stops the cycle that feeds into this system. That cycle can be caused by prosecutors in all the ways they’re open to prosecuting people, and in addition when they’re not paying attention to the factors that are feeding mass incarceration.

In my work as a civil rights lawyer, I was seeing fathers and sons both in prison. When you would talk to the children of fathers who are incarcerated, it was clear that prosecutors had failed them and their communities by not putting programs in place—whether it be reentry, social services, counseling, mental health treatment, educational treatment or opportunities for the kids—to stop them from following the same footsteps.

The system was never fair for defendants. It’s also not helping victims because victims are continuing to be victimized because you’re creating a new level of defendants and individuals who will commit crimes. Your job does not stop just by getting a conviction. Your job just begins. When you look at a more holistic view of restorative justice, we have to have district attorneys who understand that making communities whole include victims and the rights of victims, making sure that we stop the cycle of poverty and crime and those things that contribute to crime.

Let’s talk more about this idea of an overeliance on prosecution and incarceration: What aspects of the local criminal legal system that you think are most conducive to Mississippi’s high incarceration rate, and its unequal incarceration rate?

Far too often in Mississippi, we’re treating violent crime and nonviolent crime the same. That’s a must that we stop that. They’re very different and the impact of those crimes should be treated differently. 

The usage of bail and bond fees in Mississippi, particularly in Hinds County, is often used to punish individuals who are poor. Their crime continues to be that they are being punished for not having the resources to be released from jail regardless of being convicted or not. That has to stop. We can’t violate the rights of individuals if we want a criminal justice system that works. My extension of my work at SPLC has taught me that those small things to some are major things that impact individuals’ well-being and their ability to function in society. And only will we be our safest when we start looking at the things the criminal justice system is doing wrong that further lead to mass incarceration. If you’re waiting for a year, for more than a year for some instances, just to be indicted, the violation of your constitutional rights are equally as important as the victim, who you may or may not have violated their rights. The system has to work for both victims and defendants. Victims don’t feel safer if they don’t believe individuals are being held accountable as well.

That’s the crux of the extension of my work at SPLC. We’ve worked in the system long enough to identify all the things that are occurring that don’t make people safer. What is an individual being charged for? How long are they being housed without being charged ? Are they given proportionate sentences for the crime? Should they have been charged in the first place? To be safe we have to be smarter about those things and use the limited resources judiciously.

Let’s pause on this bail question: Do you think cash bail should have any role in the legal system? What would you do as DA about pretrial detention?

It’s clear historically and currently that bonds have been used in ways that weren’t intended, Bonds, if at all used, should solely be used for a danger to society or some significant flight risk. We can limit the uses of bonds and make sure that when it is used it’s used for the purposes I just mentioned, not for the purposes of punishing individuals and not letting them fully prepare for trial. I think the district attorney’s office has an obligation to ensure that it’s not being punitive to people who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. We’re not a fan of using cash bonds, unless the circumstances make it necessary to protect public safety, but not across the board as we’ve seen too often in ways that only punish individuals more who have not been found guilty.

Do you identify with the term of ‘decarceral prosecutor’ that some prosecutorial candidates have used elsewhere?

Yeah, absolutely. To end mass incarceration is the way that you make people feel safer and incarcerate fewer people. We know in Mississippi and in a lot of Southern states that mass incarceration has not made us safer. Mississippi incarcerates the third or fourth largest population per capita in the country, and we know that the United States incarcerates the most people in the world. That is not something that makes us safe. It’s also not something that makes our state a better place to live.

To focus on ending mass incarceration while maintaining public safety means that we work on what we call a two-tier track: a two-tier track is recognizing that violent offenders have to be incarcerated for public safety’s sake, but there’s a whole other population that we cannot forget. That deals with our drug courts, our mental health courts, our veteran courts. 

We see far too often that the jail system and prison system is used as a de facto mental health system. We cannot let that continue to occur. That has led to mass incarceration in places like Mississippi. I actually brought a lawsuit against a private prison in Mississippi on behalf of SPLC. What I’ve seen is that serious mental illnesses were treated as a criminal safety issues and not a medical issue. In addition, we’ve seen that addiction is treated as a criminal justice issue and not as a medical issue. If we are able to tackle those things as medical issues, I think we will be able to limit the number of people who are incarcerated, and therefore use the services of a state like Mississippi that is poor and that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on mass incarceration, to revert those funds for reentry programs.

I’d like to hear more about addiction and drug offenses, which are a major cause of incarceration in Mississippi. You’ve talked of support the county’s existing drug court, but how specifically would you change prevailing approaches to drug cases to make a substantial cut in incarceration? Are there categories of cases that you would not prosecute at all, or where you would look to avoid either conviction or incarceration?

My administration is going to focus on the treatment of mental illness and the treatment of drug addiction, not the criminalization. That’s several different factors. 

My work in school systems and with law enforcement show an inability to deescalate situations with regard to mental health illnesses. That’s significant that we work with people who bring those charges to us, which is the law enforcement agencies, to make sure they know that we are focusing on not criminalizing mental health issues. We have to make sure that our prosecutors are aware of the impact of that. In my work as a civil rights lawyer, I’ve worked extensively on secondary trauma on communities and families. The trauma can largely impact who is going into the criminal justice system. 

An individual who is addicted is not themselves. If we criminalize that behavior, we will continue to see a large movement toward mass incarceration. We have to make sure we get people the treatment they need.
Another thing that I focused on at SPLC is how we treat kids: what we prosecute kids for, when we charge them as adults. In Mississippi, you can be charged as an adult regardless of your chronological age, and we’ve seen a line of Supreme Court cases focus on kids are different and the evolving science of brain development. When we prosecute kids as adults, we can unknowingly be penalizing kids at a different developmental stage than where they are. 

Our goal is not to push people in the prison system. Our goal is to be safe, and we are not safe simply by incarcerating people. We are actually safest when we are able to divert people from the system and give them opportunities to be productive citizens.

So are there categories of cases that you would consider not prosecuting at all, for instance when it comes to marijuana possession?

We would not look to prosecute low-level marijuana possession. We recognize the changes in the country where marijuana is legal. My district attorney office would not prosecute low-level marijuana possession. Again, to my other point, prosecuting in itself does not make us safer. The war on drugs didn’t make us safer. It just has not. It has failed that way. In fact it made us, I think, less safe. We wouldn’t see ourselves seeking mandatory minimums or habitual sentences based on low-level drug possession charges, which could have been years if not decades previously. 

I want to return to the point you made about kids who are treated as adults. How would you approach this as a DA? Are there circumstances in which you think minors should be treated as though they were adults? How much do you intend to curb that practice?

I want to redefine the way we look at minors and adults, and minors who commit crimes. In Mississippi, SPLC spearheaded the raise the age campaign for adults from 16 to 17. There’s no uniformity of kids being charged as adults in Mississippi. You really need more specialized courts to focus on the needs of kids and young adults and seek alternatives when necessary. 

I don’t think that kids should be prosecuted for particular actions and behaviors: disorderly conduct, school fights. Currently we’re seeing kids arrested for school fights. One of the things that we focused on is that the juvenile detention centers the kids were being held at were increasing the likelihood that they would find themselves in the legal system. If you believe that the system has to punish and to rehabilitate—and most people understand that the juvenile system should look to rehabilitate individuals—we have to put in place the things to make sure that it doesn’t hurt.

A Jody Owens administration would not look to prosecute kids as adults unless crimes specifically involved those crimes that were more heinous in nature.

You also denounced the “school-to-prison pipeline,” and how it disproportionately affects Black children, in a 2015 op-ed in Politico. But as you wrote then, addressing this pattern also demands systemic changes beyond law enforcement practices, such as increased education funding. What powers would you have as DA to push for more systemic changes than what your office could do?

One of the things that’s missing in the larger decrease incarceration movement is progressive prosecutors who don’t mind being called progressive who are visible and active in policy-making. What I’ve seen, as someone who has lobbied the State Capitol in Mississippi, and worked in state capitols throughout the Deep South (in my role as the chief policy counsel I was coordinating efforts in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi) is that the prosecutors’ association has been the voice of policy-making historically in this country. In doing so, they have looked to put more laws in the book to incarcerate more people. I feel it’s my obligation to continue to be involved in that conversation to propose alternatives to putting more people in prison. 

I have spent time in every Mississippi prison, public and private. I’ve seen the behavior that’s happening. You don’t take a bunch of people who committed bad offenses at different levels, and put them all in the same place together, and underfund that system by not giving them resources and programming to be successful, and in many instances understaff those prisons as we have seen so often in Mississippi, and purposefully allow (as private prisons do) prisons to be run by gangs, and expect that when these individuals exit they will be better. If anything, you are creating a group of individuals who needed more help but you gave them less and put them in a place where they came out worse.

As a person who has been involved in the policy-making process, I think it’s important that we work with the prosecutors’ association to present an alternative view of being safer, without putting in more traps to continually unbalance a system that is already very unbalanced. 

You were just speaking about Mississippi prisons. You have participated in lawsuits against detention conditions in the state. You said last year that “Mississippi is failing in its obligation to provide constitutional, safe prisons.” How do you think about the fact that as DA you would be playing, as part of your job description, a major role in placing some people in conditions you have denounced? 

I think that having understood the conditions of Mississippi prisons, I am aware of what we are sending individuals to, and will therefore be more judicious in those sentences. That being said, I believe that prisons are necessary and there are people who have to go. Let’s say it like this. We have an imperfect system, which is the criminal justice system. We certainly have experience in litigating against one of those stages of imperfection, which is the prison system itself; individuals are not getting better. But while it’s not a perfect system, it’s the best system that we currently have, and when we have to use prisons, we will, and we have to use prisons for individuals and communities to be safe. 

But I do think that there are a lot of individuals who don’t need to be in prison, whether it be for the reasons we previously discussed, for health issues or addiction. And there are certainly a lot of individuals in a state like Mississippi who don’t need to be in prison for the length of time that they are. We will work to make sure that in all instances justice is done relating to that, and hopefully be able to be impactful in turning that wheel back toward justice.

You mentioned restorative justice earlier, and as part of your campaign, you have proposed expanding its use as well as the use of what your website calls forms of “intervention outside the ‘traditional’ criminal justice system.” What interventions do you have in mind, and in what sort of cases do you think their use, and restorative justice programs, are most appropriate?

One of the laws that we worked on previously that was very effective was the juvenile restorative justice program, when you target the youthful offenders and you bring in the community. We’ve often found that while our prosecutors represent the state and the communities, that often times, for the non-major crimes, victims feel differently than prosecutors about what is justice and what we should use. I think we have to use the components of the mediation program. I was a mediator in Jackson, Mississippi when I first started practicing law, and I found individuals were much more willing to work out differences when they were brought together in different circumstances, and reason was applied. Teen courts, impact panels, I think that those are both things in which you look at what the restitution programs look like. Those are all factors that could be applied into a larger system of: is the punishment being effective, or are there things that will make communities more empowered to deal with their own conflicts? 

One of the things we are finding lately is that individuals don’t know how to deal with conflict. Victim and offender dialogue has to be used to address the interests and needs of communities. Until you’re bringing those two things together, it goes back into the larger cycle — the larger cycle of individuals not talking, and prosecutors talking for victims and only using the proverbial hammer and nail, and more incarceration time because that’s the only tool they have. If we continue to see more programs in place, we will better develop the victim-offender relationship and increase the ability to use conflict resolution moving forward. 

In discussing decarceration, you have focused some responses on “nonviolent crime,” as opposed to “violent offenders.” But this distinction is often overdrawn, and reformers also criticize sentencing guidelines for higher-level crimes as excessive. Are there ways you think ending mass incarceration should involve modifying some prosecutorial approaches for higher-level offenses?

Yes, in Mississippi, we should revisit the violent crimes that do not have a violent intent. For example, currently, the burglaries of an occupied dwelling and an unoccupied dwelling fall under the same offense with a range of up to twenty-five years, both are classified as violent crimes although one does involve a dwelling where no one is present.

How can a DA specifically target racial disparities and make sure reforms are implemented equitably? Mississippi has a racially unequal criminal legal system, and we know that criminal justice reforms that cut the incarceration rate don’t necessarily shrink racial disparities. 

I’ve always thought that transparency is the key. If you look at the facts that people of races are committing crimes and drugs at the same rate but the inequities of what the incarceration population looks like is reflective of a bias of the system, we owe it to Mississippians as lawmakers to own our facts. My goal would be to highlight those disparities. You don’t have to be racist, you can just have a bias or prejudice that you don’t know is there. Or you can look at the results of the system and what’s occurring, and say “Wow, that’s happening and I’m contributing to it.” I think that’s how we get there: I think we show the transparency and publish the data, that our system is unjust and creates inequities. If we know that it’s creating inequities, we as prosecutors and as all policy-makers have an obligation to fix that inequity.

The DA is an elected position, of course. But approximately 10 percent of the state’s voting-age population cannot vote for its DAs because of the state’s harsh felony disenfranchisement laws. The rate is much higher still among African Americans in Mississippi. How do you think these rules impact the shape and legitimacy of the criminal legal system, and what would you want to see done about them?

That’s a great question. It’s a question that’s so significant and near and dear to me. As you may know, I brought a class-action lawsuit in Mississippi challenging the permanent disenfranchisement of individuals’ right to vote after they’ve served their sentence, and we have drafted and got sponsored legislation. When you permanently take away someone’s voting rights, you create a different class system. That also doesn’t make us safer because you take individuals and tell them they will never be whole in society, so how would you look at them to be whole?

One of the things we would do is that we would make sure that when we choose to charge an individual with an offense, that we’re looking at ensuring public safety but we’re also looking to ensure they reenter society with their voting rights. So if there are similar offenses, and one would not disenfranchise them, that’s the one we would use. 
I have seen too often, as I’ve been working with individuals who have permanently lost the right to vote, they feel subhuman. I have clients now who say, “Mr Owens, I did it 20 years ago but I feel like I don’t matter in society because I can’t even vote.” I have clients who tell me they feel less of a man because they cannot vote. I think that we have an obligation as prosecutor to right some wrongs in places like Mississippi. I think among voters in Hinds County is a recognition that people shouldn’t permanently not be allowed to vote. At least in this county, if I’m elected district attorney we will certainly put a stop to that as a practice whenever possible.

Mississippi has a list of offenses that cause someone to lose the right to vote. So you are saying that when possible you would use an equivalent offense that is not on the list?

Absolutely. It’s a must. Voting rights are human dignity rights, to be a functioning part of society. I think there’s enough laws in the books where we can look at it. Look at Mississippi’s process, you have to have a pardon from the governor—and this governor has pardoned no one in his eight years— or you have to go through both chambers and multiple committees. It’s just not possible for lay people to go through that process. I think district attorneys have an obligation.
Justice is not just about conviction, because we realize that when individuals are engaged in society, they are more inclined to be productive individuals. When we ostracize individuals as we have in Mississippi—tens of thousands of individuals, permanently—you’re creating a class system that district attorneys can do something about. That will be one of my initiatives, with district attorneys who feel the same way. If enough people are aware of this, we can circumvent their racist, Jim Crow-era law that continues to punish individuals for decades.

The post How Jody Owens Would Reform Mississippi’s “Truly Broken” Legal System appeared first on Bolts.

To appreciate the impact of prosecutorial discretion, take a look at Paul Ebert, the commonwealth’s attorney of Prince William County, Virginia for 51 years.

In 2011, a federal judge faulted Ebert for having withheld exculpatory information in the case of Justin Michael Wolfe; the judge vacated Wolfe’s conviction and death sentence. “Commonwealth Attorney Ebert testified … that he employs a practice of withholding information from counsel and defendants with the intent of preventing them from establishing a defense around what the information provides,” U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson wrote. This was routine for Ebert: Jackson blasted Ebert’s broader failure to institute an open-file policy in his office, which would mean sharing the information regarding a case with the defense. Ebert’s choices “served to deprive Wolfe of any substantive defense in a case where his life would rest on the jury’s verdict,” Jackson wrote, calling this “abhorrent to the judicial process.”

Coming as they did in a capital case, these findings were concerning given Ebert’s predilection for the death penalty. Ebert has put Prince William County on the death penalty’s national map⁠ over his five decades in office—he obtained more death sentences than any other Virginia prosecutor—and he did it with such policies that were not attentive to defendants’ rights.

Ebert is not seeking re-election this year, and the next prosecutor’s discretion will be just as wide as his was. The death penalty remains legal, and statewide efforts to mandate that prosecutors turn over information during discovery have been delayed.

The concurrent retirement of Corey Stewart, the far-right chairperson of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, guarantees still more overhaul in local leadership. His departure opens the door to changes in immigration policy in particular.

The fate of Prince William County’s partnership with ICE likely hinges on the sheriff’s race and on the elections for board of supervisor.

Death penalty, discovery, and decarceration: What contrasts on prosecution?

Two candidates are facing off in the general election, scheduled for November: Democrat Amy Ashworth, a private attorney and former assistant prosecutor, and Republican Mike May, a former member of the county’s Board of Supervisors. May also ran in 2015, narrowly losing to Ebert in what was the incumbent’s first contested re-election bid in two decades. Besides Prince William County, the jurisdiction also covers Manassas City and Manassas Park City.

The Political Report asked each candidate about their positions; you can read the full exchanges with Ashworth and with May.

In his first run for prosecutor in 2015, May faulted Ebert for his insufficient transparency. “If the perception is that the prosecution is withholding evidence, that sows the seeds of distrust,” he reiterated to the Political Report. He said he would institute an open-file system, and use electronic means to share information “to the maximum extent practicable.” Ashworth also believes that “the defense must be provided with all information about a case,” and this in a “timely, complete, and efficient manner,” a spokesperson told the Political Report. She did not specify whether Ashworth would do so electronically, noting that the means would depend on the “complexities of the case.” Neither provided guidelines with regards to a precise timeframe; how early prosecutors share information can be crucial to a fair defense.

Ashworth is more direct when it comes to questioning reliance on incarceration. Her website criticizes the jail expansion the county is currently pursuing. “I firmly believe that building more jails and prisons is never the answer,” she writes. “We need to start diverting people away from the prison system.”

May voted in favor of this jail expansion when he was a member of the Board of Supervisors. He told the Political Report that this vote means he has “seen firsthand how expensive incarceration is.” Asked about decarcerative reforms he favors, May mentioned diversion programs that “keep nonviolent offenders out of jail,” but specified no avenues to further expand such programs. 

In her interview with the Political Report, Ashworth made the case that “it is not smart to focus on prosecuting victimless crimes like drug possession.” She said that she would seek to avoid “conviction or incarceration” for “the vast majority” of marijuana possession cases, and that she would seek to divert “many first offender nonviolent misdemeanors.” 

May took issue with Ashworth’s stance on marijuana. Avoiding “conviction or incarceration” beyond a first offense, he said, was equivalent to legalizing marijuana “by prosecutorial fiat.” But Ashworth herself repeatedly qualified the scope of her reform proposals; she restricted her openness to diversion to “first offenders,” and said she opposed policies that involve altogether declining to prosecute a certain category of charges, including those involving marijuana. There should still be penalties because “that is the point of the criminal justice system,” she said.  

Both candidates’ positions on these matters are a far cry from the declination policies adopted by prosecutors like Boston’s Rachael Rollins, and from the proposals made by other Virginia candidates to also modify prosecutorial approaches to higher-level offenses or repeat charges.

But when it comes to a big issue driving incarceration—pretrial detention—Ashworth told the Political Report that she would “stop the use of cash bail to reduce the jail population.” This is a consequential change that is championed by some local politicians. May did not make such a commitment, conditioning bail reform on other changes to pretrial programs.

Contrasts emerged elsewhere too. Both candidates said they would be open to seeking the death penalty if they became prosecutor. Only Ashworth added she would use it more rarely than Ebert. “When I’m elected, this trend will stop,” she said.

Ashworth also stated support for legislation to legalize or decriminalize marijuana. May declined to take a position on either of those proposals, saying instead that the legislature should let people expunge first-time marijuana possession convictions. 

The candidates diverge, finally, on a heated local issue: What should happen with the county’s close partnership with ICE? 

A contract with ICE is on the line

Prince William is one of two Virginia counties in ICE’s prized 287(g) program, which authorizes local law enforcement officers to act like federal immigration agents within jails. The program has led thousands to be deported since 2007 in this county, and it has been met with organized opposition from immigrants’ rights advocates. “It creates a culture of fear, it creates a lot of internal trauma,” Monica Sarmiento, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, told the Political Report. “Immigrants are scared to call the police because of the fear of deportation.”

Ashworth advocates ending the contract, while May supports its maintenance. 

The commonwealth’s attorney does not control the future of this partnership. Still, the fate of 287(g) is on the line this year because of other local elections that are scheduled for November.

Many counties grant sheriffs sole authority over 287(g) contracts, but Prince William County has unusually complicated rules. ICE has entered a contract with the 11-member board of the Prince William – Manassas Regional Adult Detention Center, and a decision to terminate the agreement rests with that group. 

The sheriff has a seat on this jail board; most other members are appointed by the county’s board of supervisors, whose chairman—the retiring Stewart—has relentlessly championed ICE since 2007. This fall, voters are electing a sheriff as well as their board of supervisors. 

The contract with ICE looms large in those elections, which are expected to be competitive. The GOP currently holds the sheriff’s office and a majority on the board of supervisors, despite the fact that the county voted for Hillary Clinton by 21 percentage points in 2016. 

Sheriff Glenn Hill, who favors 287(g), is running for reelection. His opponent is Democrat Josh King, who has said ending this contract would be a priority. “I will use both my vote on the jail board and my influence with the new and hopefully Democratic-controlled board of supervisors to end this Corey Stewart-era policy,” he told Inside Nova. “Ending this policy is the first step in rebuilding trust between law enforcement and our majority-minority community.” 

The other high-profile election is the race to replace Stewart as chairperson. Contenders are Republican John Gray, who is mirroring Stewart’s views on immigration and favors 287(g), and Democrat Ann Wheeler. The Political Report could not identify a public record of Wheeler’s position on 287(g). She did not reply to multiple requests for comment about her views.

The results of the prosecutorial election could also impact immigration policies. The next commonwealth’s attorney may not control the 287(g) contract, but the office wields direct power over the lives of immigrants in other ways. Charging decisions determine whether a defendant becomes vulnerable to deportation. Ashworth told the Political Report that she would take the potential for such consequences into account when processing cases.

“That’s when you use your prosecutorial discretion and fashion a remedy so that you can exact justice and you can make sure that the person is made whole,” Ashworth said.

The post Prince William County Is at a Crossroads, As Powerful Local Officials Retire appeared first on Bolts.

Daniel Nichanian

You can visit the Political Report’s broader coverage of the 2019 elections here.

The prosecutorial election of Prince William, a populous county in Northern Virginia, is up for grabs for the first time in decades. Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert, a Democrat whose office is known for frequently pursuing the death penalty, as well as for findings of misconduct, is retiring after 51 years in office. Amy Ashworth and Tracey Lenox are running to replace him in the June 11 Democratic primary. 

Tracey Lenox (Photographer: Mark Finkenstaedt)

This election is one of three contested prosecutorial primaries races happening in Virginia this year.

The Appeal: Political Report has also interviewed Parisa Dehghni-Tafti (Arlington County), Steve Descano (Fairfax County), and Amy Ashworth (Prince William County).

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“Prosecutors have unbelievable discretion,” said Katie Schaffer, a New York organizer with JustLeadershipUSA, a group that supports reducing incarceration, “and they get to make the decisions about whether or not to prosecute something, about what charges to prosecute it under. The criminal code is really written like a menu of options for prosecutors.”

Candidates had until April 4 to file for these races as a member of one of New York’s eight recognized parties. Some of the resulting elections—for instance in Queens, Monroe, and Ulster counties—could emulate the conflicts that have shaken up other local elections in recent years as to the purpose of the criminal legal system and prosecution.

But a majority of the 25 DA elections drew only one candidate (the incumbent), robbing these counties of an opportunity to partake in these debates and host vigorous philosophical contrasts. A majority of Mississippi and Pennsylvania’s DA elections are also uncontested this year.

Candidates can still file petitions to run as independents until May 28, however. And six of the eight largest jurisdictions with elections are hosting contested races.

The landscape is more desolate still in the sheriff elections since only three of 15 drew multiple candidates. Last week, I wrote on Rensselaer County, where the Democratic Party filed no candidate against the only New York sheriff to have joined a ICE’s prized 287(g) program.

The Political Report has identified the candidates who filed to run for prosecutor or sheriff in New York in this masterlist. What do we already know about these elections’ major stakes?

Implementing the 2019 reforms, and beyond: New York just required prosecutors to share information with the defense within 15 days, ended cash bail for many categories of offenses, provided for speedier trials, and acted for some convictions to not trigger deportation. Those changes come into effect in January 2020. But advocates who worked to get them passed say that the DAs elected in November still face major decisions on each of those issues. For instance:

• Discovery: Schaffer urged DAs to go further than the new rules. “The legislation does require prosecutors to turn over evidence within 15 days of arraignment but it is within their discretion to turn over evidence immediately,” she said.
• Speedy trials: Erin George, a campaign director at Citizens Action New York, told me that she regretted that the new legislation did not bar prosecutors from “coercing a defendant to waive their constitutional right to a speedy trial” in exchange for a more favorable plea, but that this is a change DAs could implement in their offices.
• Bail: Some reform advocates were disappointed that the legislation did not altogether abolish the money bail system altogether, and they have vowed to advocate for further changes. Bail decisions are made by judges, but prosecutors’ position on whether to tie pretrial incarceration to financial conditions could be decisive in shaping what’s ahead.
• Immigration: Different prosecutorial decisions can have vastly different implications for noncitizen defendants. WHYY reported in March on strategies pursued by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office to counter such immigration ramifications. New York DAs could pursue similar approaches. For instance, numerous candidates in the Queens election pledged to take a conviction’s “collateral consequences” into account.

New York lawmakers are still debating the possibility of legalizing marijuana. Until they do, the decision of whether to prosecute marijuana-related offenses and how to deal with old convictions is in the hands of local district attorneys. Some New York City DAs have mostly stopped such prosecutions. Will new DAs follow that model? One candidate told the Political Report that she would. “You have Albany, you have Manhattan, you have Brooklyn, you even have Buffalo,” said Shani Curry Mitchell, who is running in Monroe County. “It doesn’t make sense that Monroe County would still have a policy where we are prosecuting marijuana possession cases.”George added that New York prosecutors’ influence on the state’s criminal legal system extends far beyond these issues. “It’s important for DA offices to not just do the bare minimum that the law says they can and cannot do,” she said. “The ultimate change that will result in ending mass incarceration is an overall culture shift in what we see as the solution to violence, trauma and harm in communities, and moving away from punitive, retributive practices, and DAs have the power to commit to begin the shift of culture in their own offices.”

Will DAASNY still represent all prosecutors? The statewide group through which prosecutors wield influence in Albany, the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York (DAASNY), resisted the proposed reforms this year. Last year, they filed a lawsuit against a new law creating a commission to investigate prosecutorial misconduct. But DAASNY enjoys the legitimacy of a professional organization, one that all DAs are part of. Will that change after the 2019 elections, as it did in Pennsylvania last year? Two of the candidates running for prosecutor in Queens, former public defender Tiffany Cabán and city council member Rory Lancman, have said that they would not join the association if elected.

DAASNY’s next president faces a challenger: Sandra Doorley, the Republican DA of Monroe County (Rochester) and president-elect of DAASNY, is up for re-election this year. She will face former prosecutor Shani Curry Mitchell, a Democrat, in November. Doorley spoke against proposed bail and marijuana reforms earlier this year, while Mitchell told the Political Report in a February interview that she supported them, and outlined other reforms she would implement such as not prosecuting marijuana possession.

A former DAASNY president drew no challenger, however. Oneida County’s Scott McNamara, who is a Democrat, spoke against the state’s legislative reforms this year, and argued that his county does not need bail reform or decarceration. He is running unopposed. Also running unopposed are the DAs of the Bronx and Staten Island, two of the three New York City boroughs with elections this year. The Appeal has reported on Bronx DA Darcel Clark’s resistance to reform proposals, most recently in March when Raven Rakia reported that she, unlike her Manhattan and Brooklyn colleagues, was not supporting a pilot program of supervised injection sites.

Queens, the marquee election: Queens, home to more than two million people, is the biggest jurisdiction holding a DA election anywhere in the country this year. Richard Brown’s decision to retire after 28 years in office has triggered a seven-person Democratic primary on June 25.

The election could overhaul an office that has long embraced a tough-on-crime approach. The Gotham Gazette and The Intercept have published thorough previews of this election’s stakes for reform. In the latter, Akela Lacy highlights the support that Cabán, a former public defender, has received from progressive groups like the Queens DSA and the Working Families Party. Another candidate who has pledged major reform is Lancman, a city council member, The Appeal reported in 2018. The other five candidates are Borough President Melinda Katz, retired state Supreme Court Justice Greg Lasak, attorney Betty Lugo, former Queens prosecutor Mina Malik, and former prosecutor in the office of the state attorney general Jose Nieves. The Appeal has explored these candidates’ position in the course of articles focused on the decriminalization of sex work and on the treatment of people on parole and probation.

Ulster County will have a new DA, too: Holley Carnright, the DA of Ulster County (Kingston), is not running for reelection. In launching his bid to replace him, first assistant DA Michael Kavanagh cast himself as a continuity candidate and leaned into his experience as prosecutor. A Republican, Kavanagh now faces Democrat David Clegg, a former public defender who is emphasizing a need to change local practices. Besides Queens and Ulster, three other counties are sure to have a new prosecutor next year: Broome, Hamilton, and Rockland.

The Appeal: Political Report will return to these five open elections in the months ahead. It will also watch the six counties other than Monroe where incumbents are challenged to identify contrasts on matters relevant to criminal justice reform. Those may be slow to emerge: in five of the six (Cayuga, Columbia, Dutchess, Nassau, Onondaga, and Seneca), the incumbent DA will only face an opponent in November. The seventh county, Hamilton, is the state’s smallest.

You can visit the Political Report’s broader coverage of the 2019 elections here.

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And in the form of a map:

 

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