In the interest of honesty – I will start this post by disclosing that I am a new public defender in the Bronx. I started pondering this question some time ago, and I wanted to throw this post out there to get some feedback from all sides of the criminal justice world.
There was a time that I actually considered becoming a prosecutor. My office will probably fire me for “coming out” but it is true. Having said that, it was a long time ago. I spoke to friends of mine who worked in various district attorney’s offices, and they all probably became prosecutors for the same reasons I was considering it – to help people. I thought I would control what happenned to offenders, and I could dictate programs and placements and make sure people got the breaks, the support services, and the second chances they needed. Then I found out what being a prosecutor really means…
80% of prosecutorial caseload is bullshit. It involves marijuana joints, shoplifting, trespassing, and (in the Bronx) – turnstile jumping. All these prosecutors who probably started this job with the same intentions I had when I considered prosecution – now spend each and everyday prosecuting these “crimes of the century” and recommending obscene amounts of jail time for the offenders. When I have a worthy client who really deserves a break or a second chance – I will take it to one of these prosecutors, and I get one of two reactions. Most of the time I am told that it has to be run by the supervisor, who has no sense of what is happenning with our clients, so it is generally rejected out of hand.
I actually had a prosecutor (who had never met my client) tell my my client was “an asshole”, was “doing nothing with his life”, and deserved to be locked up for jumping a turnstile. She was a real charmer. Of course my client was struggling with mental illnesses, hadn’t gotten his foodstamps because it was a federal holiday, and by the time he got his foodstamps, it was past the time the local bodegas were open, so if he wanted to eat that night (his first meal in 2 days) he had to take the train to the 24 hr grocery store. It was too late at night to panhandle, so he jumped the turnstile. Yes it was wrong, but he didn’t do it because he was evil – he did it because he was poor and desperate, and 10 days in jail is only going to make him more so. But this prosecutor was passionate about making sure he “did time on this one.” When did (a hopefully) well-meaning, passionate woman become like this? Is she just miserable because she had this dream of ridding the world of crime, and she is prosecuting trespassers, drug addicts, and turnstile jumpers – or is she just that bitter?
I like most of the new class in the Bronx DAs office that I have met. I think they are much like myself – people who want to be in a courtroom, not behind a desk – and people who want to do good. Though I generally disagree with their idea of what “good” is, I can respect them. But, conversely, I dislike most senior prosecutors I have met. They seem bitter, completely unsympathetic to the plight of the average Bronx citizen, and they hide behind this notion that somehow their pathetic requests for 60 and 90 days of jail for trespassers and drug users is somehow a positive influence on our community.
When has jail ever made someone richer, healthier, more confident, more self-assured, or less addicted to drugs? At some point – these prosecutors who define themselves by the number of days in jail that they get for some of these sad, sick people – must realize that they are no longer making a positive contribution to our community, and they push for insane jail terms anyways. Maybe that is when it happens, and they become like this bitter Bronx DA who thinks of these people as “assholes”, not human beings. I don’t know how you become a senior prosecutor and not become like that, but if any of you know one, pass that info along! I would love to start believing again!
