Critics of America’s criminal justice system have plenty to criticize. Policing gets the most headlines these days, but the men and women who dedicate their careers to fixing the system focus at least as much attention on prosecution and imprisonment.
And so in a moment when “abolish the police” is becoming a liberal mantra, you would expect “rein in the prosecutors” to be the sister cause. But life’s more complicated than that. Currently, the most famous criminal defendants in America may be police — namely Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, under whose knee George Floyd met his fate in May.
Now layer on top of this the fact that liberal Democrat Keith Ellison is the attorney general (that is, chief prosecutor in the state), and you get an interesting dynamic. The liberal thing to do at a time of immense passion on the Left is to prosecute. Awkwardness is following:
I can’t think of many (any?) examples where leading private practitioners have joined the side of the *prosecution* pro bono in a criminal case. Not sure what I think of it. https://t.co/czuEuwcX4l
— Dan Epps (@danepps) July 13, 2020
Neal Katyal, a prominent center-left constitutional scholar, is becoming a pro-bono prosecutor. That’s not unprecedented, but, “Hey, let’s help prosecutors lock people up,” wasn’t considered liberal a few months ago.
In February, Black Lives Matter protesters, along with other criminal justice reformers, led a protest against the use of private-sector attorneys to supplement the prosecutor’s office.
From the Houston Chronicle:
“District Attorney Kim Ogg announced the program on Monday — months after its September start date — applauding its ability to give new law school graduates trial experience while lightening workloads for hired prosecutors on her staff. Advocates pounced, questioning the ethics of outsourcing public work to private company employees, and fearing that more people prosecuting cases would lead to more prosecutions of indigent people.
“Texas Organizing Project, a minority representation group which has been vocal in its opposition to Ogg over the past year, led the protest of about 20 people outside the DA’s downtown office building. Along with members of Black Lives Matter Houston, Texas Advocates for Justice and Texas Civil Rights Project, they picketed the prosecutors office and chanted slogans such as ‘We deserve better.’” …
“‘Kim Ogg works for us,’ TOP organizer Gracie Armijo said. ‘We’re here to tell her that we do not approve of her privatizing a function that should only be performed by people who are paid by us.’”
These days, liberals who run for district attorney tout themselves as “progressive prosecutors,” suggesting they will lock up fewer people and for shorter sentences. But the history of the culture war over the past few years suggests that this will change soon enough.
The cause of aggressively prosecuting the “bad guys,” whether they be police, President Trump associates, pro-life sidewalk counselors, gun owners, or religious homeschoolers, will get plenty of “progressive” support, not from the criminal justice reformers but from the Left’s culture warriors.
