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How the Effort to End Mass Incarceration Moved to District Attorney Races

DALLAS — The Dallas County district attorney, Faith Johnson, often reminds voters that she recently won a rare murder conviction against a white police officer who shot into a car full of teenagers, killing a black 15-year-old boy.

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How the Effort to End Mass Incarceration Moved to District Attorney Races
By
Farah Stockman
, New York Times

DALLAS — The Dallas County district attorney, Faith Johnson, often reminds voters that she recently won a rare murder conviction against a white police officer who shot into a car full of teenagers, killing a black 15-year-old boy.

“They couldn’t get that conviction in New York. They couldn’t get it in California. They couldn’t get it in Ohio,” Johnson, a Republican running to remain in office in November, told the mostly black crowd at a recent candidate forum at the African American Museum. “We got it here in Dallas County.”

But then her Democratic opponent took the microphone and pledged to be even tougher on the police. And he promised that if elected, he would reduce the number of Dallas County residents who end up behind bars.

“In the first 90 days, I’m going to give you a plan to end mass incarceration,” said John Creuzot, a former judge who hopes to unseat Johnson in November.

In the past, candidates running to be district attorney — if they were challenged at all — touted their toughness on crime. But now district attorneys’ races have become more competitive, attracting large donations and challengers running on pledges to transform the criminal justice system.

The focus on local races comes as overhaul efforts have stalled on the federal level. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has vowed to aggressively prosecute nonviolent drug crimes, and President Donald Trump has praised policing tactics such as stop-and-frisk.

The push to rethink criminal justice practices has been embraced by liberals and some conservatives, and polls show a majority of voters favor reducing the number of nonviolent drug offenders who are sent to prison. But disagreement remains about exactly how to revamp district attorney offices, which handle most criminal cases in the country. In Jefferson County, Alabama, the Democratic district attorney candidate, Danny Carr, has floated the idea of treating the possession of small amounts of marijuana more like a traffic violation. In San Antonio, Joe Gonzales, also a Democrat, has pledged to rehabilitate more nonviolent offenders, rather than locking them up.

Others are proposing more aggressive measures. Rachael Rollins in Boston, who has no Republican challenger in November, released a list of low-level crimes, such as disturbing the peace, that she would decline to prosecute altogether.

The push to overhaul prosecutors’ offices was pioneered by billionaire George Soros, who in recent years has backed more than 20 candidates, including Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, vowing to upend the way prosecutors have traditionally approached their jobs.

In Dallas, Soros has given more than $46,000 worth of polling to Creuzot’s campaign through the Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC. And the Texas Organizing Project, a grass-roots economic and racial justice organization that Soros also funds, has donated more than $190,000 worth of canvassing.

The effort aims to achieve a single overarching goal, said Whitney Tymas, who heads Soros’ prosecutor initiative, which is separate from his philanthropic work.

“We want to end mass incarceration. That’s our North Star,” she said. “We’ve won twice as many races as we’ve lost. We’re not going to win them all. But we’re really trying to, because that’s the difference between people unjustly sitting in jail or not.”

Some conservatives, however, said they preferred focusing on changing sentencing laws, and warned against dragging the prosecutor’s office into partisan fights.

“Electing a reform-minded prosecutor is good. It puts more tools in the toolbox,” said Derek Cohen, director of Right on Crime, a criminal justice reform initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. “But what is at risk of happening is getting a system where you have culture wars play out in the realm of prosecutorial discretion itself.”

The district attorney race in Dallas has attracted extra attention because the county has been rocked by high-profile police shootings and is home to one of the largest inmate populations in the country. A federal lawsuit accuses the county of unfairly holding poor suspects in jail until their trials, while wealthier suspects post bail and walk free.

As demographics have changed — Dallas County is now 40 percent Latino and 23 percent black — so has the face of law enforcement. The county’s police chief, sheriff and district attorney are all black women.

But that has not stemmed the outrage over defendants who are forced to stay in jail for days or weeks before trial — often losing jobs or custody of their children — because they cannot afford to post bond.

Nor has it placated the bitterness over a shooting by a white off-duty officer, who killed her unarmed black neighbor in his apartment, claiming that she mistook it for her own. The officer, Amber R. Guyger, posted bond and walked free within hours; people protesting the death of the victim, Botham Jean, remained in jail for two days.

The killing of Jean has increased the pressure on Johnson, one of the few remaining Republican officials left in a countywide position. Johnson, who was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott to serve out the term of a predecessor who resigned over mental health issues, rarely advertises her party affiliation.

She has earned praise for stabilizing an office of more than 200 attorneys, which fell into disarray under previous leadership.

And she has championed some changes, including an “expunction expo,” in which people who have been arrested — but never convicted — can have their records wiped clean. She has also promised not to seek cash bail from people caught with small amounts of marijuana, although they are still subject to up to $2,000 in fines and six months in jail.

“I 100 percent believe that Faith Johnson is pro-criminal justice reform,” said Doug Deason, a Dallas businessman who is among the nation’s leading conservative advocates for criminal justice reform and who has donated at least $50,000 to her campaign. “The intent is to be tough on career criminals, and try to reform the others.”

But others say that Johnson’s policies fall short of what is required. In the first eight months of this year, more than 600 people were arrested in Dallas County solely for possessing small amounts of marijuana. As many as half had to pay cash bail in order to be released before their trials, according to researchers at the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center.

“Faith Johnson has articulated more progressive positions as they’ve become more popular within Dallas County, but she hasn’t actually followed through with them,” said Jennifer Soble, senior legal counsel at the Justice Collaborative Engagement Project, a new group that analyzes data for voters before district attorney elections.

As the election approaches, liberal advocates of criminal justice reform are lining up behind Creuzot, who as a judge pioneered the first drug courts in Texas that sent addicts to treatment rather than prison in the 1990s.

Creuzot played an integral role in the bipartisan criminal justice reform movement that prevailed in Texas in 2007, when conservative lawmakers balked at spending $2 billion to build more prisons. He traveled frequently to the Capitol to convince lawmakers that alternatives such as drug treatment could reduce crime at a fraction of the cost.

“He was critical in changing the narrative and the hearts and the minds of these politicians,” said Ana Yáñez-Correa, who served as executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition at the time.

But even Creuzot has been pushed to adjust his message in this election. The Texas Organizing Project backed his opponent in the Democratic primary, Elizabeth Frizell, who promised even more sweeping reforms, such as halting prosecutions of low-level marijuana possession. After Creuzot prevailed, Brianna Brown, deputy director of the project, said she urged him to make ending mass incarceration a more central theme of his campaign.

“How do you end mass incarceration? We want to hear them say the words,” said Brown, of the candidates.

Now that phrase — “end mass incarceration” — is the first thing that visitors see when they go to Creuzot’s website. Diversion courts like the one he pioneered are only a small part of the solution now, he said. More drastic changes — such as reforming the cash bail system — are needed, he said. In recent months, the Texas Organizing Project has been taking that message door-to-door in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, hoping to turn out 26,000 low-frequency voters in Dallas County.

“Right now, we have Republican legislators who think it’s OK for black and brown kids to rot in jail because they can’t pay bail,” Tempestt McHenry, 31, told voters in South Dallas on a recent Monday afternoon, reading off a script provided by the project. McHenry, who gets paid $15 an hour to canvass, said she does this work because her uncle is serving a life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.

“This system is not for the black and brown community,” she said as she passed out literature for Creuzot. “I’m hoping he will change it.”

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