Prosecutors Have a Mandate for Criminal Justice Reform
By Steve Descano and Buta Biberaj
The criminal justice reform movement is winning. Not just winning broad public support for its transformative ideas, but winning tangible changes in our communities.
For years, racial justice and civil rights activists have exposed how our justice system drives mass incarceration, and destabilizes our communities. Now, progressive prosecutors are being elected in cities and towns across the country who are bringing structural change to that system. In our two years as the Commonwealth’s Attorneys of Fairfax County and Loudoun County — two of Virginia’s largest jurisdictions — we’ve enacted comprehensive reforms to promote safety, address mass incarceration, and strive to ensure that all participants are treated fairly and with dignity.
But despite the broad popularity of criminal justice reform, conservative forces across the country are rallying to create a backlash to the movement. Megadonors are funding recall campaigns against innovative prosecutors like us and rightwing media is pushing misleading narratives of ‘lawlessness’ in communities where criminal justice reform is put into practice. They want to push the outdated policies of over-criminalizing, over-policing, and over-prosecuting that have not only destroyed countless lives, but have failed to prevent crime and provide public safety for all. The good news is that new polling from Data for Progress shows that this coordinated backlash is not fooling people — it has failed to turn public opinion against reform.
One of the best ways to help roll back mass incarceration is to give a voice to victims and allow judges to consider the unique situations of a case by eliminating mandatory sentencing minimums. Mandatory minimums take discretion away from the community and disempower the people impacted by the process. As a result, system-involved defendants, who are disproportionately Black and brown, have historically been sentenced to greater periods of incarceration than victims, prosecutors, and judges actually see fit.
Data for Progress’ polling finds 65 percent of Fairfax County voters and 55 percent of Loudoun County voters say they agree that mandatory minimums should be a thing of the past. In the most recent legislative session, both houses of Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to end some mandatory minimums, but did not land on a final bill. We need statewide leadership to keep pushing until we return power to the people and strike all mandatory minimum sentences from Virginia’s books.
Another of the reform movement’s best ideas is the ending of cash bail. In most jurisdictions throughout the country, people who can’t make bail are jailed indefinitely, despite never being found guilty of a crime. It’s an archaic practice that creates two systems of justice: one for the rich and privileged and another for everyone else. By no longer requesting cash bail in Fairfax County, we’ve ensured that no one has to lose their job, go into debt, or be unable to care for their family simply because they can’t afford to buy their way out of jail. And voters in Fairfax agree that we’re better off without cash bail; only 40 percent say they support the policy. Our next step is to bring this innovation in criminal justice to every courthouse in the Commonwealth.
Progressive prosecutors weren’t elected by accident. People from a diversity of backgrounds understand that the ‘law and order’ approach to criminal justice is a misnomer and was a failure — it did not make our communities safer. This new polling data shows that, despite the noise, there continues to be a real mandate for the work of the criminal justice reform movement.
Steve Descano (@SteveDescano) is the elected Commonwealth's Attorney for Fairfax County and the City of Fairfax.
Buta Biberaj (@biberajbb) is the elected Commonwealth's Attorney for Loudoun County.