'The Myth of the Progressive Prosecutor'

Josie Duffy Rice has a solid piece in the NY Times on "the myth of the progressive prosecutor." Grits agrees with much of what she says, with one caveat: To me, the problem isn't the hypocrisy of a Cyrus Vance or a Kim Ogg but that the fundamental job of the prosecutor is based on regressive values, attitudes and approaches.

The day-to-day tasks of the prosecutor's job contribute to a myopic worldview that is emotionally victim-centric and economically regressive, regardless of the ideology-upon-entry of this or that District Attorney at the top of a local system. A victim-centric worldview isn't inherently bad, but the prosecutor's version too often fails to recognize that victims and criminals frequently turn out to be the same people, with the differences in characterization mostly temporal and situational. That's why, for example, defense attorneys present mitigation evidence to juries at capital murder trials that more often than not these days dissuade them from a death sentence: Human beings ultimately are defined by the totality of their experiences, not their single worst bad act. But in the prosecutor's world, that one bad act is everything - if they can make the case that the defendant's behavior fits the details from the statute describing a crime, their job is done.

That's the reason that, at DA offices, management changes, but the day-to-day operations remain much the same as they functioned when our grandparents ran much-smaller versions several decades ago. Any differences between electeds play out at the margins of just a handful of individual cases. But the overarching structure and purpose of the institution inevitably remains undisturbed. Even when DAs take a progressive step, there are almost always pragmatic, internal reasons for it.

That's not to say it wouldn't be possible for a DA to fundamentally redefine the job. They have enough discretion to where all sorts of interesting possibilities might present themselves if smart people put their minds to it - IMO, restorative justice approaches likely offer the best opportunity to re-imagine the position in a way that lets them retain their victim-centric approach.

But Josie's right that that's not the mentality of the so-called progressive prosecutors being elected so far. Instead, they have mostly stuck to rolling back the most over-the-top tuff-on-crime policies but haven't really challenged the assumptions underlying the day-to-day activities their employees perform at their jobs. The reason, though, IMO, is not a lack of nerve nor moral fortitude, but more fundamentally a failure of imagination.

RELATED: Here's a good, recent analysis out of Stanford on "The Problems with Prosecutors." SEE ALSO: Why are prosecutors putting innocent witnesses in jail?