QUESTION:
In Multnomah County, each neighborhood has a county prosecutor who focuses, in many cases, on prosecuting low-level, quality-of-life misdemeanors. Would you continue that program or make any changes to it?
ETHAN KNIGHT:
Balance is the key piece. It would be disingenuous to say I don’t think we should prosecute any misdemeanors, or we should take those off the table, because people and circumstances are not created equal and we need to be individualized in both looking at problems and individuals in the system. I’m not going to say they shouldn’t be done. But on the other hand, what those neighborhood prosecutions programs can do, while sometimes prosecution is appropriate, other times they can look at problem-solving in a big-picture way.
I helped create the Westside Community Court Program almost 20 years ago. At that time, those different prosecution programs were not done many places. We went to Red Hook in New York and looked at that model and tried to get treatment providers in the courtroom, because that simply wasn’t done then. That worked for what it was. The problem now is we don’t support it with the services we need. Which gets back balance. You don’t just want a high-volume operation where you’re churning people through for low-level offenses, but you can’t just say we’re not prosecuting any theft cases anymore. That doesn’t really respond to the needs of the community in a healthy way.
MIKE SCHMIDT:
I like the idea that district attorneys are connected to specific communities and get to know their community leaders. I think there are opportunities to make changes to it, though, which would be to start actually working with the community to see how they would like certain cases handled. I’ve talked to some groups about using restorative justice instead of a traditional prosecution model. Neighborhood DAs could absolutely be people who could think about how we could handle things in the community where those cases are coming from, with help and buy-in from the community.
It’s a great program. The office has very serious budgetary issues. That program has been cut I think out of necessity over the years. Because of those budget decreases and with what we think the current economy is setting up like, I’m not sure that the budget is going to be a lot better in the near future. I think neighborhood DAs can be problem solvers and work creatively with the community to resolve cases, and still get at the underlying issues. I’d like to continue it. It’s definitely going to be a matter of budget and what we can do.