John Pfaff was quoted in the ABA Journal about a new ACLU web-based initiative in California that allows users to learn about and directly contact any of the state’s 58 county prosecutors.
While the user can drill down to the positions taken by individual DAs, the juxtaposition between an initiative’s outcome and the public position of the prosecutors is stark. For example, the report shows that Prop 36, which narrowed the state’s three strikes law in 2012, passed with nearly 70 percent of the vote, however only three of the 58 DAs publicly supported the initiative.
“It’s a simple and catchy way to see what DAs do,” says John Pfaff, professor of law at Fordham University School of Law and author of Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform.
Pfaff says that the focus on all counties, and not just population centers, increases the value of this project. “Smaller community DAs are becoming more punitive, or at least no less aggressive,” he argues. “Making it easy to understand what these smaller county prosecutors are doing is incredibly important.”
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As for the new project in California, it is too early to know what the impact will be. However, the increased national focus on elected prosecutors seems to be working, says Pfaff.
“It used to be that DAs would almost never lose a race … Now, we are starting to see incumbents getting ousted in primaries and general elections,” he says.