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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:40 am
Time: 11:40 am
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1 results foundAuthor: Satterberg, Dan Title: Prosecution that Earns Community Trust Summary: We could think of this as the protest era. From the #MeToo movement to NFL players taking a knee, our country faces a period of serious upheaval. Marginalized people protest the oppression they experience on a daily basis. And these protests get the full attention of criminal prosecutors, because they go right to the heart of criminal justice and public safety. In some communities, when police arrive at a scene of violence, they encounter witnesses who choose not to help. Police often find people at the crime scene who feel that the police and courts have never treated them fairly, so in protest, they refuse to help solve serious violent crimes in their community, even when they hold valuable evidence. An individual who has been treated unfairly by the criminal justice system may choose to boycott that system by refusing to tell police who murdered their best friend. This sometimes leads to street justice, a different and often violent kind of retribution that only creates more victims of violence. This is called the "no snitch" rule. A more profound protest, we cannot imagine. This boycott of the criminal justice system takes other forms, including countless victims of domestic violence and sexual assault who choose not to report the crimes they suffer. These underreported crimes are a silent protest by the most vulnerable members of our society who do not believe that involving police, prosecutors, or courts will improve their situation. Women who face domestic abuse may fear the spotlight that reporting will place on their precarious situations, including the possibility of reprisal within their own neighborhoods. The boycott also extends to immigrant communities. Crime victims with unclear citizenship status may fear that asking for help from authorities will lead those same authorities to scrutinize their right to live in this country. Taken together, these boycotts amount to a public safety disaster. And they point to the greatest challenge for every District Attorney in America: to earn and keep the trust of the communities where crime has the greatest impact. In this essay, we aim to provide some fresh thinking that an elected prosecutor can use to apply justice outside the courtroom, working together with local community groups to create alternative forms of justice. We advocate for an expanded role of the prosecutor that reaches both upstream and downstream from the prosecutor's traditional role as courtroom adversary. Prosecutors who engage the community outside the criminal courtroom can help trust grow, step by step. The first step is to demonstrate that prosecutors can listen to our critics. When people in the community speak truth to power, the job of the powerful is to stop and listen. Another step prosecutors can take to earn public trust is to make concrete their commitment to treat crime victims with dignity and compassion. That means informing and including victims in the decisions that affect them. But the prosecutor's duties go beyond respectful treatment of victims; prosecutors also must inform and include the entire community as they create more effective accountability measures for low-level crimes and juvenile misconduct. Public safety is something that prosecutors must co-produce with their communities. It is not something they can simply deliver to the public. Details: New York, NY: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2018. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 23, 2019 at: https://thecrimereport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IIP-Community_Trust-paper.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://thecrimereport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IIP-Community_Trust-paper.pdf Shelf Number: 154347 Keywords: AttorneyCommunity-Based ApproachesDistrict AttorneyProsecutionProsecutorSnitching |