Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced planks to his groundbreaking initiative to transform Brooklyn’s justice system that includes among other items considering non-jail resolutions at every juncture of a case and shifting toward community-based responses to crime, and establishing early release as the default position – not the exception – in most parole proceedings.
The initiatives are part of Gonzalez’s Justice 2020 Initiative a new progressive model of criminal justice reform designed to keep Brooklyn safe and strengthen community trust by ensuring fairness and equal justice for all.
“Justice 2020 will reshape the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office into a model of progressive prosecution that keeps the public safe and strengthens community trust by ensuring fairness and equal justice for all. We will move away from over-reliance on incarceration, engage all stakeholders as partners in justice, focus resources on those who do the most harm and make my Office more strategic and mission-driven,” said Gonzalez.
“As we continue to reap the benefits of historic decreases in crime here in Brooklyn and across the country, now is the time to focus on reforming injustices in the system that have led to over-reliance on incarceration and a lack of trust in the criminal justice system. In many cases, incarceration does not keep us safer, and I am committed to shifting to ways of holding people accountable and increasing public safety that don’t rely on incarceration as the default option,” he added.
Other Justice 2020’s key reforms to reduce incarceration and ensure equal justice include:
- Prioritizing collaboration with neighborhood leaders and community-based organizations to provide more diversion opportunities and engage stakeholders as partners.
- Implementing updated data and analytics systems to drive reform and ensure accountability and transparency.
Gonzalez said the new approaches were developed following months of intensive consultations with dedicated committees made up of reform experts, defense attorneys, service providers, law enforcement, formerly incarcerated individuals, clergy and others.
Justice 2020 is the first program in the nation to take a truly comprehensive and holistic approach to implementing a new model of a progressive and modern prosecutor’s office in the 21st century, Gonzalez said.
The panel of experts that led the process to study, create and select these reforms was led by Medgar Evers College President Dr. Rudy Crew and former Chief Judge of the State of New York Jonathan Lippman. Gonzalez plans to make measurable progress towards enacting all 17 recommendations of the Committee by the end of 2020.
“Justice 2020 isn’t just an agenda – it’s a comprehensive roadmap to improve public safety while diverting those who do not pose a threat to public safety out of the criminal justice system and into community-based services,” said Lippman.
Evidence shows that relying on incarceration as the automatic response frequently undermines public safety by breaking apart families and communities and preventing people from pursuing the very educational and employment opportunities that reduce crime and strengthen communities. The District Attorney’s Office has already begun implementing Justice 2020, evidenced in their recent work to:
- Erase past marijuana convictions.
- Develop new protocols for investigating and prosecuting police misconduct and create a Law Enforcement Accountability Bureau.
- Establish a Hate Crimes Bureau as a single point of contact for these offenses.
- Begin revamping the Office’s data management system.
The full Justice 2020 Report is available here.
