Professor and Director of Center on Race, Law, and Justice Bennett Capers was quoted in The Washington Post, sharing his expert opinion on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s sweeping policies that focus on alternative solutions to crime rather than incarceration.
Manhattan’s new district attorney is pushing forward a flurry of sweeping new guidelines aimed at lowering incarceration rates by halting prosecutions of low-level offenses, downgrading some felonies and asking prosecutors not to seek life sentences without parole.
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“Bragg is saying there are other ways of punishing people, seeking justice and deterring people from committing crimes other than incarceration and he is focusing on nonviolent and nonserious offenses,” said Bennett Capers, a law professor at Fordham University.
Capers said Bragg’s “bold” initiatives follow in the steps of other liberal prosecutors around the country — such as Kim Foxx in Chicago, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia — who have pushed for reduced prison sentences and highlighted racial biases in the criminal justice system, condemning the nation’s mass incarceration rates. The United States incarcerates a larger share of its population than any other country for which data is available, according to the Pew Research Center.