Giving Compass' Take:

• Arisha Hatch and Terri Gerstein discuss how organizations are working to change the face of criminal justice professionals to make the justice system work for everyone. 

• How can funders support local efforts to change the criminal justice system through elections? 

• Find out how a State's Attorney can change prosecution rates. 

The past several years has brought a re-examination of the role of law enforcement in confronting some of the key challenges facing our democracy. This new vision of the prosecutor’s role includes dismantling elements of the criminal justice system that perpetuate racial and economic inequities, affirmatively wielding power in response to community concerns, and addressing economic exploitation, power disparities, and abuses of authority.

There are close to 2,400 elected prosecutors in the United States. These prosecutors are mostly white, mostly male, and approximately 85 percent of them run for their positions completely unopposed. Along with their staff, they make daily discretionary decisions large and small that impact the lives of predominantly black, brown, and working-class communities. “Tough on crime” rhetoric and policies—perpetuated by Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs, the 1994 Crime Bill, law enforcement television shows like COPS and Law & Order, and the nightly local news—became the metric for law enforcement at the expense of safe, healthy, thriving, and empowered communities. Police unions were the critical endorsements that district attorney (DA) candidates needed to vie for, and, once elected, the groups deemed most worthy of consideration. And although in court filings, prosecutors’ offices technically represented “The People,” many interests of working-class communities became the least of their concerns.

In 2015, Color Of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, gathered about 10 community organizations from across the country to reimagine the role of prosecutors. Many community-level organizations had been working in silos for decades to push back against a growing incarceration economy and cultural attitudes that had destroyed their communities. At that event, the organizations crafted six demands of prosecutors: to be transparent; to hold police accountable for overreaches and unnecessary violence; to treat kids like kids; to exercise their discretion and decline to prosecute petty and poverty-related offenses (like marijuana possession); to avoid the use of bail as leverage to incarcerate poor people before trial; and to avoid partisan prosecutions connected to immigration, the death penalty, and abortion.

At the national level, the power of the elected DA was finally emerging as a viable intervention in the effort to reform discriminatory policing and mass incarceration—a tangible victory for activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. Many organizations had independently reached the same conclusion: at minimum, more DA races—often a launching point for higher political office and yet ignored by both major political parties—should be contested.

Read the full article about making the justice system work for everyone by Arisha Hatch and Terri Gerstein at Stanford Social Innovation Review.