Works in Progress Group 2: Prosecutors

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Session Type: Works-in-Progress

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Franciscan A

Floor: Ballroom Level

Group #2 Prosecutors

Progressive Facade: How Bail Reforms Expose the Limitations of the Progressive Prosecutor Movement
Sarah Gottlieb, University of Baltimore School of Law

Progressive prosecutors have been lauded as the new hope for change in the criminal legal system. This movement believes that progressive prosecutors will use their power and discretion to address systemic racism and end mass incarceration. Just as this hope has arisen, so have concerns that meaningful change cannot be enacted within the criminal system by the very actors whose job it is to incarcerate. This Article highlights these concerns by looking at the results of enacted bail reforms by four different progressive prosecutors and analyzes the initial promises made, the actions taken to reform and eliminate monetary bail, and the results. This analysis will show how these prosecutors not only failed to deliver on the promises of reduced incarceration and more equitable treatment by the criminal system, but also examine why these efforts often resulted in an unintended refocus on incarceration. Finally, this Article will use bail reform to show how progressive prosecutors are not a reliable method for transforming the criminal legal system due to their lack of transparency and accountability, role as political actors, unwillingness to respond to data, and the adversarial nature of the system.
Moderator and Discussant: Ron S. Hochbaum, University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law

Who Do Prosecutors Protect?
Vida Johnson, Georgetown University Law Center

Most Americans think of prosecutors as public servants. Prosecutors hold themselves out as representing the people of the jurisdiction where they serve to fight crime and increase community safety. But in fact, prosecutors do not primarily seek to protect their constituents. Instead, prosecutors trade community safety, privacy, and even the constitutional rights of the people they are supposed to serve to enlarge police power. Prosecutors routinely whittle down the rights of the public, shield police from public accountability, and fail to prosecute police when they break the law. Instead of protecting the people they represent, prosecutors protect police, applying what I term a “police-protection lens” to their work.

This article makes several novel contributions. Through an analysis of arguments advanced by prosecutors to curtail our constitutional rights, as well as their failure to prosecute police who hurt civilians, and their advocacy to keep police disciplinary information from the public, this article reveals that prosecutors protect police at the expense of the public. This article also suggests a theory of evaluating the conduct of traditional prosecutors, not as actors seeking to protect the community, but instead first and foremost as advocates for police and government power.