Tag: Reform

Thoughts on New York’s Manhattan’s District Attorney’s Day One Memo

Alvin Bragg the Manhattan DA is not the first DA to make a policy manifesto on how their office will run. His is one of the most resent. Bragg is part of a Progressive Prosecutor movement that is moving through some of the most crime ridden cities. Manhattan joins Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles with their progressive movement.

District Attorneys are supposed to be the leading “Law Enforcement Official” in their County. That would put them in the Executive Branch of government. Prosecutors enforce the law they don’t interpret the law and they don’t create the law. If Prosecutors want to change the law there is a process for doing so, it isn’t by improperly charging crimes that are robbery (with a weapon) as simple petit larceny. As a Prosecutor if you don’t like the fact that when someone robs another person by displaying a gun (§ 160.10(2b)) and can get sentenced up to 15 years in jail. It’s not the Prosecutors choice to establish the penalty for the crime, the legislators did that. Again there is a process to change the severity of the penalty through petitioning the legislator, it is not by artificially improperly charging a serious felony robbery to a petit larceny.

For the record petit larceny is a theft of $1 to under $1000 and is a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to 1 year in jail. This compared to a robbery where a the offender brought a gun to aid in the completion of the robbery with a threat of harm if you don’t give up the money. Crazy.

Mare sure to check out DA Bragg’s Police Memo there is much more than what was covered here so far.
See DA Bragg’s Police Memo HERE

Concerns with DA Bragg’s Policy Memo

The Commissioner of NYPD has issue with the policies of the Manhattan DA.
See HERE

The Union for NYPD also see issue with the DA’s policy. See HERE

Here is a link to the New York Constitution and the role and function of District Attorneys in New York – access it HERE

2 Articles from the Manhattan Institute

Looking Beyond Day One

Three steps to minimize the impact of the new Manhattan DA’s soft-on-crime policies.
See HERE

How Much Leniency with Criminals Can We Afford?

Progressive prosecutors claim that a soft-on-crime approach will make us safer, but the evidence tells a different story.
See HERE

Reimagining Judging

My focus in this short essay is only on sentencing. A judge’s role is different at sentencing than her role at other points in a criminal trial, or in other contexts.

The stakes are the highest; it is when state power confronts a person’s liberty. And I write for the most part about what I know best, which is federal sentencing. Federal sentencing has changed over the past forty years and with it the judge’s role. It has seesawed from a period when the purpose of sentencing was rehabilitation, and a judge had virtually unlimited discretion to sentence (Gertner 2010). It then moved to a more recent period when a judge’s power was more strictly cabined by mandatory minimum sentences, and mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Finally, it has shifted to the present which is—at least on the surface—some combination of both. Today, there is space for more judicial discretion. On the surface, that change—increasing judicial discretion—looks promising.

More judicial discretion might well be an antidote to treating people as Guideline categories or cogs in a three-strikes machine. Reformers sometimes assume that when judges focus on an individual, they will necessarily consider their humanity and the social context of the crime, all factors that have largely been ignored during the past thirty years. But there are reasons to be skeptical.

Access the article at the link below:

squareonejustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/CJLJ9284-Reimagining-Judging-report-211215-WEB.pdf

DA STAT

Data Driven Decision-Making

This is a very interesting website. I suggest taking time to look through the data. I have some suspicious with the explanation of the data and what data is available. There is noting positive about the Quality of Life in San Francisco. Homelessness and Crime is out of control. I took a quick look at the data and 2021 looks no different and even better (the filing rate) than pre-Boudin years.
I would like to know if defendants not held on bail are committing new crimes while there criminal cases are pending, because intuitively it looks like more are. What is the recidivism of those released? Some reports from California show recidivism low yet for probation about 60% commit a new crime or break the rules of probation and are sent back to prison.
One serious flaw is the understatement of harm in property crimes. People feel violated when someone breaks into their car rips open all the compartments spewing the contents on the floor of the car and taking everything of value. Its worse if the car is damaged to make entry or your college term paper was on your laptop that was stolen. The violation to your person increases when your garage or home is burglarized. Realistically chances of being burglarized is rare and the burglar returning is even rarer. Yet the fear people have when finding that their home was broken into, the contents of all their drawers and closets dumped on the floor. There private areas of their home occupied by a stranger rummaging their intimate possessions. Some people can’t go back into their home.
Yet Progressive Prosecutors want us to believe that these property crimes really are not a big deal and do not call for much in the form of punishment and certainly not prison. Below DA Boudin want to resolve ham – he is talking for the defendant. The Defendant caused the harm and now needs to be accountable for the penalty of prison.

Under the leadership of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office works tirelessly to restore victims, resolve harm, and break the cycle of crime. As gatekeepers of the criminal justice system, prosecutors have both a legal and ethical duty to ensure the system operates effectively and without bias to protect public safety.

SA STAT can be found here

National Urban League Unveils “21 Pillars,” A Comprehensive Framework for Redefining Public Safety | National Urban League

National Urban League Unveils “21 Pillars,” A Comprehensive Framework for Redefining Public Safety | National Urban League
— Read on nul.org/news/national-urban-league-unveils-21-pillars-comprehensive-framework-redefining-public-safety

Get the toolkit HERE

Racial Disparities in Misdemeanor Speeding Convictions | RAND

In this report, researchers use data on speeding violations in Virginia to examine whether there are racial disparities in who benefits from the discretion of law enforcement and the courts to discount or downgrade misdemeanor violations.

— Read on www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1317-1.html

A .pdf of the report can be accessed at the website.