Richard Garella Photo
Larry Krasner with constituents.
After having spent 18 months in federal prison and three years on supervised release, I am no longer considered the property of the federal government.
Back in 2014, I pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud in the City of New Haven. I was a closing attorney and part of a conspiracy that included many individuals featured in the New Haven Independent.
Now that I have experienced the system from both the outside, the inside, and then back out, I have concluded that we are indeed in a dark place. I also see a ray of hope emanating from the City of Brotherly Love. As long as we choose to look.
For over 20 years I was an attorney who represented criminals in New Haven courthouses on Church and Elm streets. I never thought that I would end up behind bars. I often wondered what really went on behind the prison walls. Defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers should all spend at least one night locked up behind bars to see how the other half lives. (Click here for a link to the diary I wrote for the Independent while in prison.)
The criminal justice system will forever be stuck in the Dark Ages if there continues to be no transparency. You can take a cell phone video of a cop shooting a guy in the back but you cannot take a photo of anything that goes on in prison.
At a recent Yale lecture at the British Art Center I attended, the Yale professor said that she was frustrated that she could not get access to any of the Connecticut prisons she was researching. I told her that the government does not want anyone to know what is going on behind the prison walls.
I regaled the Yale students in attendance with prison stories. They were speechless. Most guys who graduate from prison are uneducated, inarticulate, poor and want to put the whole experience behind them. I’ve tried to bring prison life out in the open, through my blog, larrynoodles.com, in order to educate the public about much-needed reforms. I am hopeful that I can do something to bring about change.
The best example of criminal justice reform going on in the United States right now is in Philadelphia. A 30-year veteran criminal defense attorney Larry Krasner was recently elected district attorney for the City of Philadelphia.
Larry’s election victory was the result of his platform to end mass incarceration. It was also a result of the hard work by supporters of Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, and former inmates.
After Larry took office 38 prosecutors were fired and escorted out of the building. Larry replaced most of them with former public defenders. Larry also hired many outside experts in the area of criminal justice reform, homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness to help him run the office.
Larry eliminated cash bond for most non-violent crimes.
“We don’t imprison the poor for the so-called crime of poverty,” he said.
Larry required prosecutors to calculate the cost of imprisonment before sending someone to jail and explain to the sentencing judge, in open court, the “unique benefit” of imprisonment. Larry maintains a blacklist of bad cops whom prosecutors are forbidden to call into court to testify at any trial.
Larry brought murder charges against Officer Ryan Pownall, a white cop who shot a 30-year-old black man in the back. It was the second time Pownall shot an African-American man in the back. The first shooting left the victim paralyzed. The Philadelphia police union has repeatedly attacked Larry and called the murder charges against a fellow officer a “disgrace.”
Larry has done more to effectuate change in the criminal justice system than any sitting president, Congress, or non-profit reform movement.
Larry Dressler.
Connecticut is in need of major criminal justice reform. The Connecticut Office of the United States Attorney recently announced the arrest of Quinten Staggers, an African-American homeless drug addict, for distributing K2 on the New Haven green last summer.
Quinten pleaded guilty three weeks ago and is facing up to 20 years in federal prison. The silence of so-called reform advocates and “progressives” is deafening. The silence of so-called “fiscal conservatives” is equally deafening. You would think that the federal government would have more important cases to spend your tax dollars.
Jails are no substitute for mental hospitals, affordable housing or drug rehabilitation centers. Don’t let the heartless employees, and voters, of the prisons, prosecutor’s offices and law enforcement agencies continue to impose bad policy on society. Make your voice heard in government, don’t be a lemming for the authorities in power.
Since our prosecutors are appointed and not elected, it's unlikely that we can change the system as fast as Philadelphia is doing.
Politicians have long demonized people who end up being labeled "criminal", while purposely ignoring banksters and other white collar miscreants.<br /> By the way, do you know the definition of a criminal: it is someone who is apprehended, convicted and incarcerated for a crime. How many are never apprehended (apparently most of the people around Trump) or convicted, much less end up in prison.<br /> We need to return to rehabilitation as a goal and abandon the human rights violations that pass for policy in today's prisons. Check out Norway for a start. <br /> We can reduce our crime statistics by reducing many activities that are more about economic distress and survival strategies ( selling drugs, sex work, etc.) and inevitably we will decriminalize so-called illegal drugs by regulating and taxing them.<br /> The system is inherently racist in that people of color, regardless of their personal history of never being involved with the criminal justice system, are still treated differently from white people. I've been there and witnessed it. It exists in the police, the prosecutors and the judges. <br /> If people don't understand that mass incarceration is NO accident, but the outcome of deliberate government policies and that things like solitary confinement are torture, then we'll just have to rely on Kim Kardashian and Kanye West to see justice for those caught in the clutches of an evil system.