In prior posts here and here, I have highlighted an ongoing series of lengthy articles in The American Conservative that are part of "a collaborative series with the R Street Institute exploring conservative approaches to criminal justice reform." This latest article zeroes in on a notable new figure under the full headline "What’s Philly’s DA Got to Do With Me?: If every city had a Larry Krasner, there might be fewer people in jail who didn't belong there." Here is how the article gets started:
Since taking office he’s stopped prosecuting simple possession of marijuana. He’s limited civil asset forfeitures only to cases in which there’s a conviction. He’s directed his assistant district attorneys to include the cost of a prison term in making sentencing recommendations. Oh, and he’s published a list of 29 local police officers that he views as unreliable witnesses due to their abuse of their powers and other corruption.
For traditional law-and-order types, Philadelphia’s new district attorney, Larry Krasner, might be something of a nightmare. But for civil libertarians and jail reformers across the political spectrum, he’s putting into practice policies that they’ve been pushing for a long time.
Krasner, who took office in January, styles himself a progressive, but his objectives dovetail closely with those of conservative and libertarian justice reformers. All share a broader vision of radically reshaping a criminal justice system that is deeply unjust and out of line with American constitutional and moral values.
“I personally think our criminal justice system is thoroughly rotten and it has a number of features that, in my judgment, have so undermined the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and so sharply tilted the playing field in favor of prosecutors and against defendants that is has deprived our criminal justice system of its integrity and its legitimacy,” Clark Neily, the vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute, tells The American Conservative.
Prior related posts:
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