Remember: Your District Attorney is a Politician, Too

Here in the U.S., district attorneys are politicians. They hold elected office -- and it’s up to us to likewise hold them accountable to the communities they represent.

In a great post at California Progress Report, Natasha Minsker points out the troubling stranglehold that incumbent prosecutors hold on their offices across the country. She cites her home state as an example: 56 California prosecutors are up for reelection in June, but only 16 are facing challenges. In other words, 70% of them will go unchallenged at the ballot box. The sad truth is that regardless of whether we think our local DA does a good job of protecting public safety, most of us are stuck with him or her.

The numbers nationwide are even more worrisome. All but three states elect their local prosecutors (those exceptions are Alaska, Connecticut and New Jersey, where the state attorney general appoints DAs). When incumbent DAs run for reelection, they win a staggering 95% of the time. Incumbent prosecutors run unopposed in 85% of races. The system is built to give voters a voice in guiding their local criminal justice system, but it achieves the opposite effect.

Minsker, the death penalty policy director at the ACLU of Northern California, is right to call on activists across the country to do something about this. There are plenty of easy ways to make a difference. Find out who your local prosecutor is and when they’re up for reelection. Even if they run opposed, ask them to articulate a platform and to address important concerns. Call for a public forum -– even incumbents running unopposed should earn our vote.

Minsker's organization is spearheading a campaign to increase citizen participation in choosing prosecutors. They've launched a Facebook Group: “What a Difference a DA Makes” and started using the twitter tag #DA2010. It's an important effort, and one that deserves our support.

She points in her post to Dallas DA Craig Watkins as a new kind of American DA who works to be "smart on crime" rather than blunt and tough. But Watkins isn’t alone. San Francisco DA Kamala Harris is another DA leading the way toward "more safety at less cost," as she explained in a post here. Cy Vance, Jr., the new Manhattan DA, included strong measures to prevent wrongful convictions in his platform, which meant that the issue played a role in the campaign for America's most visible prosecutor's office. Lesser-known DAs across the country are wisely beginning to direct resources to drug courts and treatment and they’re seeing the light on shorter sentences. Pre-sentence release programs are saving taxpayer dollars and shrinking the influence of the greedy bail bonds lobby.

Local prosecutors won’t seek these reforms unless urged to do so by constituents. And when they do, we should reward them with our support.

The U.S. system of electing prosecutors is fairly unusual, and not without its flaws. But it’s the one we’ve got, and it offers us a key opportunity to have an impact on an often-abused office -- one we shouldn't pass up. It's time for criminal justice reformers to make their voices heard in prosecutors' offices across the country.

Photo Credit: quinn.anya