Episode 3: Who Built Mass Incarceration? Prosecutors

Justice In America

The Appeal

News, Politics, Prison, Law, Criminal, Justice, Jail, History, Education, Incarceration, America

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2018

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who has had the biggest impact on the growth of our incarceration system? It’s not the judge, the jury, or the legislator. It’s not the police, and it's certainly not the President. It’s someone else—the prosecutor. Prosecutors are getting more attention now than ever, but many people still don’t know what they do.

Prosecutors don’t just play an important role at trial. It is prosecutors who recommend what bail a judge should set, prosecutors who decide whether a person should face criminal charges and what those charges should be, and prosecutors who control the plea deal process. Perhaps more than anyone else, prosecutors are responsible for our mass incarceration epidemic. On this episode, we’ll explore the impact prosecutors have and take a look at how they wield their immense power.

We’ll talk about the problems with prosecutors, and their excessive power, negative incentives, and almost total lack accountability. We’ll also talk to John Pfaff, a lawyer, economist, and prosecutor expert, whose book, Locked In, examines the power of prosecutors.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	That specific ADA sitting at his desk in 1990 is no less punitive than that same ADA at his desk in 2010, there's just 10,000 more of them.
0:17.3	And if you need to find cases to justify your job, we admit 600,000 people to prison, we arrest 12 million people.
0:24.0	If you need a case, there's always a case to take.
0:27.0	Hey everyone, I'm Clint Smith and I'm Josie Duffy Rice.
0:36.0	This is Justice in America.
0:38.0	Each show we discuss a topic in the American criminal justice system
0:41.0	and try to explain what it is and how it works. Thank you everyone. criminal justice
0:45.0	and try to explain what it is and how it works.
0:44.0	Thank you everyone for joining us today.
0:46.0	You can find us on Twitter at justice underscore
0:49.0	podcast.
0:50.0	You can like our Facebook page, Justice in America,
0:53.1	and you can subscribe and rate us on iTunes.
0:55.6	We'd love to hear from you.
0:57.0	We started the show with a clip from our guests, John Fath,
0:59.9	who is a law professor at Fordham University
1:01.7	law school and the author of Lockocked In, where he uses data to discern the most powerful and often hidden forces behind mass incarceration.
1:09.0	He'll join us later in the show to help us discuss today's topic.
1:12.0	Great. so today we're going to talk about one of the biggest players in the criminal justice system.
1:19.0	No, it's not the cops or the judge.
1:21.0	Not the jury or the defense lawyer.
1:24.1	Today, we're talking about the prosecutor.
	...

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