Important read: ‘The Perverse Power of the Prosecutor’

Legislators write the laws, and law enforcement (as the name implies) enforces them. But the role of prosecutors plays an under-appreciated role in the fight for criminal justice reform.

District attorneys are not passive players in the politics of crime, sitting idly by awaiting their orders from on high. In states from Pennsylvania to Louisiana to California, district attorneys aggressively, and effectively, lobby against reforms they dislike and for new laws that they do. Louisiana recently adopted an expansive criminal justice reform bill, but the final version was significantly watered down from the original proposal, almost entirely due to aggressive and effective lobbying by the state’s district attorneys.