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Prison break
DA lays out plan to end trend of
excessive incarceration in boro
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
He wants to raise the bar.
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez on
March 11 unveiled his long-awaited
plan to reform criminal prosecution
in Kings County. The so-called Justice
2020 initiative aims to divert people
away from the criminal-justice system
by pushing prosecutors to avoid excessive
incarceration — a trend the district
attorney admitted to promoting
himself in his two-plus-decade prosecutorial
career.
“I’ve put a lot of people in jail, in
prison, I’m not afraid to do that when
it’s necessary. But I’ve also learned the
lesson, in time, that many of the people
I’ve put in jail did not need to be there,”
Gonzalez said while announcing the
plan during a press conference at his
offi ce in America’s Downtown.
The district attorney conceived of
the 17-point initiative , whose terms
he hopes to implement before the end
of 2020, with help from a committee of
more than 60 members, who included
criminal-justice reform advocates,
union reps, heads of local do-good
groups, academics, cops, and community
leaders.
In order to promote alternatives to
incarceration, Gonzalez said he will
direct some of his offi ce’s resources toward
treating the underlying causes
of specifi c incidents, such as rapes
and hate crimes, each of which in 2018
spiked by 22 and fi ve percent in Kings
County, according to police statistics .
And he already began some of that
work, including efforts to vacate dozens
of low-level weed convictions last
year , as well as the creation of a dedicated
hate-crimes bureau in his offi ce,
along with another unit dedicated to
keeping law-enforcement accountable.
“Often, less is more, often times
prison does not equal public safety,”
the top prosecutor said. “We’re going
to make criminal convictions and incarcerations
a last resort, and when
we do seek it, we’re going to try to minimize
excessive sanctions whenever
possible.”
When asked if relying less on incarceration
would promote criminal
activity, Gonzalez argued that the
current mindset of locking every perpetrator
up is not necessarily a deterrent,
and comes at a high cost to taxpayers.
“We want people to be accountable
for the crimes they commit. It’s
just that sending someone to jail is
the most expensive and least effective
way that we now know how to do this
work,” he said.
The Justice 2020 plan also calls for
more community engagement within
PROPOSING CHANGE: District Attorney Eric
Gonzalez, center, unveiled his Justice 2020
action plan on March 11.
District Attorney’s offi ce
the criminal-justice system, proposing
the formation of so-called neighborhood
safety councils and new partnerships
with local civic groups, both of
which will survey residents about how
they want justice to be served.
Creating these groups will help the
district attorney’s offi ce sooner identify
the driving factors behind some
crimes, and potentially allow law-enforcement
offi cials to intervene before
a bad deed is committed, according to
Gonzalez.
“My wife is a teacher, and I’ve
heard from many of her friends that
teachers could tell you the fi ve percent
of students that they deal with, who
they understand are at great risk. And
there’s unfortunately nothing that can
be done in those cases until they act
out and commit crimes,” the top prosecutor
said.
A press-conference attendee fi red
back that such community monitoring
could easily devolve into oversurveilled
neighborhoods and predictive
policing, but Gonzalez countered
that his team will tow that fi ne line
by heavily communicating with cops
and the local liaisons his offi ce puts in
place.
“We’ll work with our Police Department,
we’ll use data, to understand
who may be drivers of crime, or who
is most at risk for committing serious
offenses,” he said. “But we’re also going
to work with our community leaders,
stakeholders, clergy, and the other
people who know the young people in
their communities that need help before
they go down the path, you know
the wrong way.”