Ground zero for woke district attorneys is a left-wing think tank in the heart of the Big Apple.
The soft-on-crime approach espoused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other progressive prosecutors in troubled Democratic cities has been nurtured and advanced by a policy center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, no less.
The public college in Hell’s Kitchen, where many future cops are educated, is home to the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, which since 2016 — with the help of controversial figures such as Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx, Los Angeles DA George Gascón and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin — has been instrumental in reshaping how prosecutors across the country view crime and punishment.
The Institute’s symposiums and issue papers hold forth on topics such as race, officer-involved deaths and bail reform — all in a concerted effort to change the role of the prosecutor to be more proactive and less punitive.
“No one should be defined by their bad conduct alone,” the Institute’s “Vision for the Modern Prosecutor” declaration says about the accused.
Its position papers endorse charging accused criminals with fewer serious crimes or keeping them out of jail entirely. And it recommends that offenders not be called as such, but rather something that respects their “humanity.”
The Institute’s paper on “Creating a Culture of Racial Equity” suggests that a hotline be created for district attorneys so “whistleblowers” can turn in “internal obstructionists” not on board with their boss’ woke policies.
Another treatise on “How Prosecutors Can Support a Reimagined Police Response” bizarrely suggests celebrating times “when prosecutors exonerate someone.”
A John Jay spokesman said “no one benefits from the conviction of an innocent person.”
The papers are posted on the center’s website, which also includes a “living land acknowledgement” that New York was the Lenape homeland and that “We honor all of the indigenous nations and their land with great gratitude and acknowledge the genocide and continuous displacement of indigenous peoples.”
The institute says in its 2020 primer on “Prosecutorial Culture Change” that the job of the head prosecutor “is not to ‘win’ cases, impose long sentences, or ‘beat’ the defense. Instead, it is to promote safety, accountability, healing, trust, and empowerment.”
“If you were elected head prosecutor, what is a change you would make on day 1?” the primer reads.
It was Bragg’s “Day one” memo that created a firestorm when he instructed his prosecutors not to seek prison sentences for scores of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing.
Bragg issued a new memo Friday reversing two of his most controversial policies by saying that commercial robberies with a knife or a firearm, even if not loaded, should be felonies.
The Institute’s tenets are not unfamiliar to Bragg’s staff.
Meg Reiss, his second-in-command as chief assistant district attorney, was once the executive director of the think tank.
One CUNY professor called the Institute elitist and said it operates with “a smug sense of righteousness and smartness.”
“All of this unravels when you take it into communities, when you deal with victims,” the professor said. “This kind of rigid ideology does not survive the battlefield of reality in the community.”
Thomas Keniff, a defense lawyer and Bragg’s Republican opponent in last year’s Manhattan district attorney race, said fair treatment was a noble objective but “can’t be a code word for abandoning the traditional role of the prosecutor — which is to assign consequence to crime.”
“Winning a case is a good thing. It’s an adversarial system,” he said.
Cyrus Vance, Bragg’s predecessor, launched the Institute in conjunction with John Jay, which is part of the taxpayer-funded City University of New York.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who was then California Attorney General, was on its initial advisory board.
Harris said at the time the Institute would take a “smart on crime” approach to develop “innovative, data-driven prosecution strategies that will lead to a more transparent, fair and effective criminal justice system.”
Vance’s office provided $3 million over three years to pay for the Institute, the money coming from settlement funds paid by international banks that violated US sanctions.
That money ran out in March 2021 and it is funded by grants from Arnold Ventures, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Schusterman Family Philanthropies and the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative, according to John Jay.
Several members of the Institute’s advisory board have become lightning rods as crime has skyrocketed in their cities.
- Opponents of Gascón are waging a recall effort as crime in LA has soared with smash-and-grab robberies and the murder of UCLA student Brianna Kupfer.
- Foxx’s bail-reform efforts in Cook County, which includes Chicago, are held up as success stories in the Institute’s papers. But homicides in Chicago reached a 27-year high in 2021 with at least 800. Foxx also took heat after her office initially dropped charges that “Empire” actor Jussie Smollet faked a hate crime. A jury in December convicted Smollet of staging the attack.
- Milwaukee DA John Chisholm admitted his office mistakenly cut loose the suspect in the November Waukesa Christmas parade carnage just five days before the massacre that left six dead. Some state lawmakers have called for his ouster.
San Francisco DA Boudin, who faces a recall election in June over his progressive policies, participated in a 2020 Institute panel discussion on the future of prosecution.
“Following prosecutorial policy advice from executives whose own policies have failed at public safety risks undermining justice and stability for our most vulnerable communities,” said Hannah Meyers, director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said there has been a shift by the criminal justice system to “the woke progressive left where there is a strong desire not to punish those who commit crime but rather to rehabilitate and so far it’s been a significant failure.”
“I have been very outspoken about my concerns on these so called progressives DAs . Most of the cities now with these violent crimes are the ones with these types of DAs.” Bratton said.