John Pfaff spoke with New Hampshire Public Radio about elections for big city prosecutors and why some are losing their positions.
JOHN PFAFF: Prosecutors really have driven mass incarceration over the past, especially the past 20 years. As crime has gone down, prisons have gone up. The main force behind that has been increasing aggressiveness by prosecutors. And the only real way to regulate a prosecutor is through elections.
KASTE: Voters seem more skeptical of the lock-them-up approach to crime, and Pfaff sees the results in other recent defeats of incumbent prosecutors in Brooklyn two years ago and in Caddo Parish, La., last fall. He puts last night’s defeat of Anita Alvarez in Chicago in that same category.
PFAFF: There was an underlying dissatisfaction with her as just a tough-on-crime DA in a time when toughness doesn’t quite have that same political support.
KASTE: With the recent push for reforms in both policing and incarceration, these once-overlooked prosecutor races are becoming real battlegrounds. Last fall, for instance, liberal billionaire George Soros threw hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race in Caddo Parish.
And Pfaff says it makes sense to pay attention to these races because a prosecutor is more likely than a President to have a direct effect on the average person’s daily life.