Want to Reform the Criminal Justice System? Focus on Prosecutors

As the nation’s attention is focused on the need to transform policing, prosecutors must acknowledge that they too have a role to play. We have already seen the beginnings of a movement for prosecutorial reform across the country. During the Obama Administration, federal prosecutors adopted “Smart on Crime” policies designed to reject the tough-on-crime narrative and to make individualized assessments in cases instead of reflexively bringing the most serious readily provable charges in all cases. But much of the effort to reform has come at the state level, where voters have elected pro-reform district attorneys like former criminal defense lawyer Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and former deputy public defender Chesa Boudin in San Francisco.