NEW YORK, NY – The narrative that voters’ “wholesale rejection of criminal justice reform” will end reform is rejected in a Newsweek Opinion piece by Rachel Marshall, executive director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College.
Marshall rejects the narrative, arguing the “biggest threat to reform” is the coordinated efforts of the states “to undermine or even abolish prosecutorial discretion.”
Marshall points out that following the “overwhelming passage of California’s Prop 36,” the media has been very charged in attempting to “project the California election results onto the entire country.”
The passage of California’s Prop. 36, Marshall writes, reverses a “decade of progress” in “charging some low-level crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies.”
From these election results, Marshall’s Newsweek Op-Ed points out, “predictable headlines” emerged declaring “the death of criminal justice reform and the end of the reform prosecution movement.”
Marshall acknowledges “these electoral defeats” are indeed setbacks to the progress of criminal justice reform. However, she notes that California—where an influx of “money from tech leaders and special interests” have affected local elections—“does not tell the whole story.”
In her article, Marshall highlights that national polling has in fact found “broad and bipartisan support” for criminal justice reform, citing recent polling by FWD.us which showed “strong, bipartisan support for reform” with “85 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Independents, and 76 percent of Republicans” —all supporting criminal justice reform.
Marshall, in reference to this data, writes, “This is consistent with what I see every day as the executive director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College.”
Marshall notes counties across the country are “increasingly embracing new approaches to public safety.”
And additionally, more prosecutors are pushing for a “more effective and more just legal system,” be it through improving victim support, adopting diversion programs, utilizing alternatives to incarceration and or promoting police accountability. These approaches, Marshall explains, are working.
However, Marshall adds, a new problem has risen for prosecutors.
Marshall explains that prosecutors are “increasingly held responsible for problems they lack the power to solve” like substance use, homelessness, and mental health crises, resulting in a wave of “misinformation and disinformation” about the “impact of their policies.”
Because of this, as Marshall maintains in the Newsweek Op-Ed, prosecutors’ ability to exercise discretion—which is at the heart of their work—is “under coordinated attack nationwide” in states like Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.
Project 2025, Marshall notes, envisions the federal government being able to sue or prosecute local prosecutors in order to force them to approach their job “robotically” as opposed to using the discretion that the U.S. legal system affords them.
To this, Marshall writes, “Holding prosecutors accountable is critical—but stripping them of the tools they need to serve their communities is undemocratic and unjust.”
With these new attacks on prosecutorial discretion, Marshall insists prosecutors must be given the support they need to serve their communities.
Marshall adds, “We must ensure that prosecutors are free to use those approaches to respond to their communities’ needs. And, with Project 2025 looming in the background, there is no time to waste.”
