GET OFF MY NECK

An impassioned indictment of governmental prosecutors for racial injustice.

According to Hines, a trial lawyer, former prosecutor in Baltimore, and former assistant attorney general for Maryland, the prosecutor’s office is “the most powerful institution in the criminal justice system.” However, its major goal is to obtain convictions rather than advancing true justice or treating defendants with compassion. This also applies to police, who gather incriminating evidence and feed the accused into the prosecutorial system. Additional conviction opportunities come from plea-bargaining arrangements and the probation system, in which parolees are always at risk of being cited for violations and returned to court. Judges support these dynamics by rubber-stamping prosecutors’ recommendations, and the conviction mentality also provides incentives for prosecutorial and police misconduct in a wide variety of situations. Making matters worse is the criminal justice system’s inherent racism, with Black people more likely to be arrested, more likely to be given longer prison sentences, disproportionately denied bail, and more likely to be killed by the police. That 95% of non-federal prosecutors are white is part of the problem. As a leading advocate in the criminal-justice reform arena, Hines wants to change the culture, and she suggests better staffing to cut down on onerous workloads, racial bias training, integrity units to identify misconduct, more emphasis on diversion and restorative justice, increased attention to white collar crimes, Black-white pro-justice alliances, and the election of progressive prosecutors—e.g., Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and Marilyn Mosby (now out of office) in Baltimore. Hines supports her argument with governmental statistics, research studies, examples of prosecutorial overreach, and anecdotes from her courtroom experiences. Despite a somewhat untidy presentation and the wide scope of her accusations, this is an indictment with serious, presumptive validity.

A forceful plea to reform the toxic entanglement of prosecution, policing, and probation in the criminal justice system.