Larry Will Continue To Attack Mass Incarceration and Work To Prevent Violence


When Larry ran for Philadelphia District Attorney, he promised that he would end our addiction to mass incarceration and reform an office that, for too long, let the powerful remain unaccountable. He has kept his promises — but there is more to do. A broken criminal justice system can’t be repaired in four years. In his next term, Larry will continue fighting for this community and for a more equitable and less carceral criminal legal system that invests in people, not profit and power.

  • Expand Alternatives to Prosecution

  • End Overly Punitive Sentences

  • Continue the Effort to End Money Bail and Expand Pre-Trial Release

  • Push For Public Health Solutions to Gun Violence

  • Keep Holding Those with Power Accountable

  • Keep Supporting Victims

  • Stop Wrongful Convictions Before They Happen And Exonerate People Who Were Wrongfully Convicted

  • Fight for Legislative Change to Protect and Re-Invest in the Community and Establish a More Equitable System 

  • Reduce Racial Disparities Throughout the Justice System

  • Protect Immigrants To Ensure They Are Treated Equally

  • Protect Democracy

  • Increase Justice for Juveniles

Expand Alternatives to Incarceration

There are people in this community who have caused serious harm and must be held appropriately accountable. But not every case and not every victim calls for extreme punishment.   For children and young adults, extreme punishment is seldom appropriate. During our first administration, we dramatically expanded programs to off-ramp young people out of the justice system, and also started restorative justice programs for juveniles. These programs are very promising, and now it is time to expand them.  In Larry’s next term, he will:

  • Expand the use of restorative justice for juveniles as well as those aged 18-25;

  • Invest in community groups that can provide restorative justice and community-based supports;

  • Expand diversion opportunities for those charged with felony offenses where addressing trauma, mental illness, or substance use will seriously mitigate the likelihood of future violence and crime.

End Overly Punitive Sentences

For a generation, the criminal legal system has imposed excessive sentences that are entirely disconnected from public safety concerns.  Larry has taken a dozen major steps to rein in unnecessary incarceration during his first term, reducing future incarceration years by nearly 50%.  In his next term, he will take additional steps, including:

  • Stop charging people who did not kill or intend to kill anyone under the felony-murder doctrine.   Under the felony murder doctrine, a participant in a lesser crime can be convicted of murder if a person dies as a result of the incident, even if the participant in the lesser crime did not kill or intend to kill anyone. If the charges fit traditional first degree or third degree murder, he will bring those charges.  Otherwise, he will charge the underlying felony. This approach is essential to achieve individual justice---people must be accountable for their own actions and intentions, rather than the actions and intentions of others;

  • Make probation the presumptive offense when a case is probation-eligible;

  • Continue reducing excessive supervision on probation and parole, which tends to increase crime rather than reduce it after the first three years.

Continue the Effort to End Money Bail and Expand Pre-Trial Release

Larry has implemented two phases of bail reform, and his work has helped to decrease the jail population to its lowest level since 1985. To further limit the use of pre-trial detention to only those cases where public safety is at risk, he will:

  • Presume release for non-violent charges, including felonies where the defendant poses no threat to public safety;

  • Push for robust pretrial release/detention hearings that occurs within 72 hours before real judges rather than bail commissioners;

  • Work toward achieving expedited release hearings when probation and parole detainers are imposed;

  • Advocate for the Pennsylvania legislature to end money bail by passing new law.

Push for Public Health Solutions to Gun Violence

This office charges and prosecutes gun violence with vigor.  Just before the pandemic effectively closed Philly courts, during the first quarter of 2020, the office’s conviction rate for gun violence was around 85%---as high as it had been in the prior five years.  These prosecutions, however, cannot address the underlying causes of gun violence. Larry’s top priority is to support and elevate what works:  public health solutions to the gun violence that is harming our most vulnerable communities. He will:

  • Advocate for increased funding and use of evidence-based violence interruption programs and blight remediation in our hardest-hit neighborhoods, both of which have proven overwhelmingly successful at reducing gun violence when capable people do them in the right way;

  • Support financial investment in our hardest hit communities, including trauma counseling, educational opportunities, and job development to stop gun violence before it happens;

  • Request increased funding for our hospital trauma centers.

Hold Those With Authority Accountable

The D.A.’s office has not been afraid to prosecute and sue people who cause harm, including law enforcement officers and drug companies who have caused the opioid epidemic.  Over the next four years, Larry will continue this work by:

  • Establishing a grant-funded truth, justice and reconciliation commission that shines a light on prosecutorial and police integrity violations, violence and abuse;

  • Continuing to expand and support the evenhanded prosecution of crimes committed by police;

  • Tracking allegations of illegal conduct by police, including illegal searches and seizures and warrantless arrests, to catch troubling patterns and increase integrity in law enforcement.

 

Increase Support for Victims and Survivors

The evidence is clear- violence prevention begins with supporting victims and helping them heal. It is also the moral thing to do. In Larry’s first term, he began the CARES program to support homicide victims’ families intensely after their loved one’s murder and instituted new policies to ensure strong efforts to communicate with victims and survivors are made within his office.  In Larry’s second term, he will expand support for victims, including for the first time in cases where no arrest is made,  by prioritizing the following:

  • Providing services to all victims of gun violence, even if the police never make an arrest in the case. Police have made arrests in fewer than 30% of gun homicides this year, and in only 16% of the non-fatal shootings. We need to make sure everyone is getting support, even when police fail to solve the case;

  • Placing social workers at intake for all sexual assault cases to offer counseling services;

  • Placing prosecutors and social workers in communities most impacted by violence to help connect those residents to support and counseling.

Prevent Wrongful Convictions

Larry has been a nation-wide leader in exonerations. To date, he has helped exonerate 17 people. He will continue those efforts, while working to make sure wrongful convictions do not happen in the future.  In his second administration, Larry will:

  • Train against problematic interrogation techniques;

  • Train against junk forensic science, and make sure the office does not rely on it;

  • Train on the reliability (and unreliability) of identification techniques;

  • Establish a database of informants and some other witnesses who testify in multiple cases;

  • End the reliance on highly unreliable jailhouse informants without independent corroboration.

Fight for Change In the Legislature

A prosecutor’s office cannot bring about all necessary changes affecting crime and public wellbeing.  But the district attorney has a tremendous platform that he can use to garner political and public support for broader and often slower legislative changes to reform our criminal justice system, reduce crime, and promote safe and healthy communities. For the next four years, Larry will fight in Harrisburg to:

  • Implement robust gun control;

  • Establish harm reduction centers to prevent opioid overdoses and increase treatment for addiction;

  • Decrease restrictions on victim compensation, which currently prohibit support for victims who are believed to have been involved in crimes or their families;

  • Increase violence prevention funding, including support for Cure Violence, blight remediation, and increased gun violence trauma treatment at our emergency centers and in our communities;

  • Change juvenile certification laws, so that fewer children are required to start their cases in adult court;

  • Place caps on supervision terms to shorten the time people are on probation and parole;

  • Increase everyone’s participation in voting, including people who have criminal records.

 

Reduce Racial Disparities Throughout the Justice System

Over his first term, Larry has worked hard to decrease the racial disparities that permeate our legal system. Nonetheless, they persist. In the next term, he will:

  • Study and publish reports about disparities at arrest and intake by charge;

  • Study and publish reports about disparities in outcomes by charge;

  • Create a task force that develops policies to eliminate any disparities in case charging and sentencing decisions;

  • Continue the already robust recruitment and hiring of the most talented, diligent, moral and diverse attorneys in the office’s history.  The DAO will recruit annually at all six remaining HBCU law schools, all top-20 rated law schools, and all Philadelphia law schools to achieve this goal.

Protect Democracy

This year, we saw our democracy under constant attack across the country and especially in Philadelphia. Larry will continue fighting against these threats to our right to vote by:

  • Expanding the election protection task force;

  • Working with city and state elected officials to expand early voting options and make vote-by-mail laws transparent, clear, and easy to follow;

  • Actively combatting disinformation campaigns designed to undermine faith in our democratic process;

  • Diligently and appropriately enforcing laws to combat voter suppression activity and potential domestic terror and violent acts directed at substituting violence for ideas.

 

Increase Justice for Juveniles

Larry has achieved unprecedented reforms in juvenile justice by reducing the number of juveniles held in placements away from their communities by over 80%, and by drastically increasing the portion of juvenile cases resolved in juvenile court to over 99.5% of all juvenile cases, among other reforms.  Larry will continue to reform juvenile justice by:

  • Doubling the number of juveniles whose cases are diverted rather than ending in conviction;

  • Overseeing the return of all juveniles to their homes and communities or to juvenile facilities rather than adult jails and prisons;

  • Expanding his office’s restorative justice program for juveniles.

 

Learn More About How We Will Keep Moving Forward

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