District attorneys could be described as the most powerful people in the criminal justice system. They have the authority to decide whether to charge someone with a crime, to determine the quantity and seriousness of charges, and essentially set prison terms in the majority of cases that end with a plea deal. Consequently, since the 1980’s DA’s have contributed more than any other elected official to the quadrupling of individuals incarcerated.
Across the country, voters are electing nontraditional prosecutors. Recent years have seen a new crop of candidates pushing back against the “tough on crime” attitude of their predecessors, and running on so-called “progressive” platforms. Post-election rulings, however, frequently contradict such change-making platforms.
We need DA’s who will do the right thing, not just say what will please liberal voters. This event will address the roles progressive DA’s can play in dismantling the prison industrial complex, how communities can organize around electing actual criminal-justice reformers, and examine how we can hold those elected accountable to their promises of reform.
Scott Hechinger is Senior Staff Attorney and Director of Policy at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS), one of the largest public defense firms in the country, representing about half of all those arrested in Brooklyn each year. As a long-practicing public defender, Scott represents and advocates for low-income individuals accused of crimes in and outside of court.
As Director of Policy, Scott leads advocacy efforts and strategies on range of issues driving mass incarceration including pretrial detention, prosecutorial accountability, overcriminalization, mandatory minimums, coercive plea bargaining and immigration law and policy. Scott speaks widely and frequently guest lectures at law schools and universities. His work and commentary has been featured in a range of outlets including the New York Times, New Yorker, NPR, Al Jazeera, NBC Nightly News, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Darius Charney is a Senior Staff Attorney who works on CCR’s government misconduct and racial justice cases. He is lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, CCR’s landmark federal civil rights class action lawsuit that found the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices racially discriminatory and otherwise unconstitutional.
He is also counsel in Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department that successfully challenged the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY, and Brown v. Snyder, a case challenging Michigan’s “emergency manager” law.
Lang previously served as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan for 12 years, where she investigated and prosecuted violent street crime and homicides, and most recently served as Special Counsel for Policy and Projects and Executive Director of the Manhattan D.A. Academy, a resource for professionals working at the intersection of law and public policy.
Lucy is a graduate of Swarthmore College, where she serves on the Board of Managers, and Columbia Law School, where she serves as a Lecturer-in-Law. Lucy was named a 2015 Rising Star by the New York Law Journal, and was a 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar.
Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project; Decrim NY
Audacia Ray currently serves her LGBTQ community as Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, and she is a founding member of the Decrim NY Coalition. Previously, she spent five years as the founding executive director of the sex worker-led media, storytelling, and advocacy group Red Umbrella Project. She is lead author of the reports “Individual Struggles, Widespread Injustice: Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Peoples’ Experiences of Systemic Employment Discrimination in New York City” (Anti-Violence Project, 2018) and “Criminal, Victim, or Worker? Impacts of the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts on Adults Arrested on Prostitution-Related Offenses in New York” (Red Umbrella Project, 2014) and is co-editor of the book $pread: The Best of the Magazine that Illuminated the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution (Feminist Press, 2015).