Oregon’s 36 district attorneys are some of the most powerful actors in the public safety system, and about half of them are running for reelection in the May 17 primary election.
Whether or not your district attorney’s name is on your ballot, this is an opportunity to understand how dramatically prosecutors can influence our public safety system.
To elevate some of the key ways prosecutors can positively impact the system, Safety & Justice Oregon, Latino Network, APANO, Coalition of Communities of Color, East County Rising, and Unite Oregon developed these Eight Steps to Justice: How DAs can transform justice in our communities and across the state.
Shannon Wight is deputy director at Safety & Justice Oregon, a nonprofit building a movement for a safer and stronger Oregon. She has led efforts around many of the leading-edge public safety and criminal justice reforms of the past two decades.
DAs can transform our response to harm and violence. They can prioritize addiction and mental health treatment, and they can shrink the number of people in prison, jails, and on supervision. They have the power to address racism in the criminal legal system, advocate for services that help crime victims heal, and fight for dollars for community-based services that make our families safer and stronger.
The Eight Steps to Justice lay out concrete steps prosecutors can take to reform our system, as well as areas where you can advocate for change and hold prosecutors accountable.
Step 1: Listen to Communities.
There’s a paramount step to building a criminal justice system that creates true community safety: Prosecutors must listen to people who have been harmed by the public safety system, and to learn what communities need to heal.
To improve safety for all Oregonians, district attorneys must build relationships with communities that are most impacted by over-policing, crime, and mass incarceration — dynamics that particularly affect Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities.
Through conversations like these, DAs can learn how historical and ongoing trauma, structural racism, and overzealous prosecution have devastated families and communities. They can also engage communities to develop ways to overcome these systemic problems.
Step 2: Support crime survivors.
A Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that 60% of violent crime goes unreported. This number is even higher for victims of color who have also experienced harm at the hands of law enforcement.
The criminal justice system has not been a trusted resource for crime survivors of color, but DAs can change how victims are supported in a couple of essential ways.
- DAs need to hire diverse victims’ assistance advocates who can provide culturally specific support, allowing more survivors to receive the justice and healing they deserve.
- DAs must support survivors whether or not they choose to prosecute. Victims shouldn’t be required to cooperate with a trial to get the services they need.
- DAs should support all victims regardless of whether they have also been charged or convicted with crime. Everyone deserves support and resources, regardless of their past or current involvement in the justice system.
Step 3: Address systemic racism in prosecution.
Prosecutors contribute to a racist, unfair system.
Black and brown people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system with African Americans making up more than 9% of Oregon’s prison population though they comprise only 1.8% of the state’s general population. In addition, many prosecutors’ offices work with federal immigration authorities like ICE, which increases racial profiling and disproportionately punishes immigrants.
When DA offices track racial disparities in sentencing by race, gender, age, and neighborhood, communities can hold prosecutors accountable for how they contribute to disparities, and we can develop solutions that eliminate them.
Step 4: Rethink jail and bail.
Incarceration both triggers and ensures generation poverty. Jail is unnecessarily overused. About 9 in 10 detained defendants had a bail amount set but were unable to meet the financial conditions required to secure release, causing unemployment, home loss, and trauma to children.
DAs can address this by reducing the use of cash bail and declining to prosecute low-level misdemeanors. This would decrease the number of people sitting in jail for mental health crises and addiction.
Step 5: Reduce the number of people on probation and parole.
Supervision is another form of correctional control that needs to be limited. Probation and parole sentences are too long and have too many conditions that put people back into the system unnecessarily. They also disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities.
District attorneys can stop mass supervision from replacing mass incarceration. They can limit fines and fees, keep supervision sentences short, and not incarcerate for technical violations such as missing an appointment or changing addresses.
Step 6: Invest in public health, not prisons.
The vast majority of incarceration is fueled by the criminalization of behavior related to substance use and addiction. More than half of all people in prisons and jails have mental health disorders and are often incarcerated for low level offenses.
DAs can decline to prosecute low-level and public nuisance offenses like disorderly conduct and criminal trespass, which are often used to arrest people who are experiencing houselessness. We need better access to housing, health care, and treatment, not more prison beds.
Step 7: Let judges do their jobs.
People who commit violent crimes should be held accountable based on the facts of the case, not based on arbitrary minimum sentencing that don’t consider individual circumstances.
District attorneys have the power to oppose ineffective mandatory minimums whenever possible, including supporting legislation to reduce unnecessary incarceration and provide greater support to survivors. By understanding that accountability isn’t measured by long prison sentences alone, we can move closer to true justice and safety.
Step 8: Hold police accountable.
Prosecutors and police regularly work as a team. But when the person accused of a crime is a police officer, the public deserves to trust that investigations and trials will be fair and impartial.
It’s critical that DAs set up independent investigations of police officers’ use of force, particularly when an officer has used deadly force, to ensure that the investigation isn’t swayed by relationships with the prosecutors’ office. Similarly, when an officer is testifying in court, DAs should bring forward any prior misconduct by that officer.
By holding police accountable, prosecutors will ensure investigations of police aren’t compromised by the work they do together.
District attorneys are responsible for prosecuting crimes, and they have the power to take real steps to justice. But too often they fail our communities and families.
It’s past time for them to focus on true accountability and healing. These 8 Steps can help us hold our elected prosecutors accountable to do so.
Learn more about Safety & Justice Oregon, the 8 Steps to Justice, and our movement at https://sjoregon.org/joinus.