Larry Krasner - For the People: A Story of Justice and Power

Shine a light

Through the eyes of the ones left behind

Elton John, Philadelphia Freedom

I am now the elected district attorney of the city and county of Philadelphia, Pennsylvaniaone of the largest cities in the United States. Philadelphia is a diverse and wonderfully quirky city, known for Brotherly Love (and Sisterly Affection more recently), Ben Franklin, police corruption and brutality, the U.S. Constitution, cheesesteaks and soft pretzels, Questlove and the Roots, rabid sports fans, patronage, its successive waves of immigration, big-city ward politics, the Declaration of Independence, high poverty, high home ownership, a working-class attitude, affordability, a great restaurant scene, and its magnetic attraction for millennials. Its also known for bombing itself.

But this book is not about my time as DA. Its about the little story of how I got thereand the bigger story of how an outsider movement for criminal justice reform took power and then took office. Before I was sworn in, my long lifes work as a lawyer was in criminal defense and civil rightsas far from the work of a traditional prosecutor as a lawyer could be. Back in that life, I joined with other Philly outsiders to push for justice against the insiders in the all-powerful Office of the District Attorney, the institution I now run. But our work as outsiders didnt accomplish a whole lotat least not enoughbefore our movement did the uncomfortable thing: We took back power. We outsiders went inside and took over the institution we had fought against all our lives.

Philadelphia is rightly famous for its national parks, historical sites, statuary, and artifacts dedicated to the ideals of freedom and governmental restraint. Independence Mall, in the center of the city, includes the antique Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were drafted in all their deeply flawed glory. The little brick house where Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag from hemp is nearby. Independence Hall looks out at the National Constitution Center, a modern museum across a blocks-long grassy expanse. The tourist-friendly Liberty Bell Center sits on that grassy mall, adjacent to the museums most recent and smallest addition: its guilty conscience, the slave memorial that roofs over the archaeological remains of General Washingtons slaves quarters. In Mount Vernon, Washington owned 316 slaves. As president in Philadelphia, he owned nine. They were: Oney Judge, Christopher Sheels, Hercules, Austin, Richmond, Paris, Giles, Moll, and Joe. The stone corners of the slaves tight lodgings are underground, nearly hidden, visible only from ground level through glass. You have to look down to see them.

There are other good reasons to look down in Philly. The many legacies of slavery are also nearly hidden here. Unrestrained government still tramples freedom in the city, this time through its criminal justice system, but it can be hard to see. Consider, for example, that 27 percent of Pennsylvanias state prisoners in 2017 had been sentenced in only one of the states sixty-seven counties: Philadelphia. Those incarcerated Philadelphians are hidden in prisons that dot the states rural and suburban counties, stretching west until they run out at the Ohio border.

Sometimes the system hides in plain sight: In Philly you cant walk down a city block without passing someone currently on county probation or parole. You just dont know who it is. When I was running, Philadelphias county supervision rate (the rate of people currently on probation and parole) was one in twenty-three, higher than in any other big city in America. Among African Americans, the rate was one in fourteen. For African American men in Philly, that rate was even higher. Phillys rate of county supervision was twelve times higher than the supervision rate in New York City, a two-hour drive north. In comparison, the rate of adults on probation or parole was one in fifty-five in the United States, the most carceral country in the world. Phillys rate was more than twice the national rate.

When I ran for DA, what was visible for decades in Philadelphia was an outsized police department the city could ill afford. Philadelphiacurrently the countrys sixth largest cityhad the fourth largest police department, with more than six thousand uniformed personnel. Despite a thirty-year downward trend in crime nationally and locally, and despite being the poorest of the ten largest cities in the United States, the city continued to fund cops at the expense of desperately needed resources for public education; treatment for mental illness, addiction, and trauma; and economic developmentall the things that we know actually prevent crime. Yet this generously funded police department had not reduced Philadelphias rates of violent crime compared to other jurisdictions. The national and local downward trend in crime was real, but so was the fact that even during decades of declining crime, Philly chronically had higher violent crime rates than jurisdictions with smaller police departments.

The citys war on the freedom of its own citizens was also evident in the fact that, until recently, Philadelphia had sentenced more juveniles to life without any possibility of parole than any other city in the world. Sometimes Philly had sentenced those juveniles to death. Philadelphia remained the only northeastern U.S. city where the death penalty was even availableand it had a history of being one of the most prolific producers of death-row residents in the country.

Pennsylvania lawmakers hadnt helped their biggest city to reclaim its history as a cradle of freedom. Its legislators had increased the number of criminal offenses to nearly 1,500a 500 percent increase from the 1970s, when there were 282 Pennsylvania crimes that worked just fine. Add to that Pennsylvania lawmakers mad love for mandatory sentencing laws and high sentencing guidelines, and here was what you got: While the rest of the country had increased the number of people in prisons and jails an alarming 500 percent during the period of mass incarceration starting in the 1980s, Pennsylvania had increased its numbers more than 700 percent by 2017, with Philadelphia being its primary driver. Pennsylvania has outpaced the rest of the most incarcerating country in the world.