Sahan Journal recently spoke with the Hennepin County Attorney primary candidates about their campaigns. Their answers to each question have been edited for length and clarity.
How do you plan to address rising violent crime while also implementing criminal justice reform measures, since a lot of people think of it as one or the other?
Paul Ostrow:
This has been falsely presented as a choice—that somehow we can’t be tough on violent crime and hold people accountable while at the same time reforming the criminal justice system. We can and must do both.
The reality is the vast majority of people that come into contact with the criminal justice system are people who have made mistakes, people that have addictions, people who we’re not necessarily afraid of. There’s a relatively small number of people who we have reason to be afraid of, who have caused people harm, use violence, and abuse weapons.
When we look at the issues of criminal justice reform, I’m a strong advocate of drug court, diversion, and ways that we can keep lower level offenses off people’s records. Those are all critical. I’m a strong believer in being able to expunge criminal records for lower-level offenses. All those things are really important and I’ll fight as hard as anyone for those.
Making sure we are tough on those relatively small number of people that are creating a significant spike in violent crime, that’s something we must do. But at the same time, we need to make sure that our criminal justice system is reformed. Once people have paid their price—they’ve completed treatment, they’ve got jail time or whatever the consequences might have been—as a society, we have to move towards accepting and allowing people to move forward with their lives so they can get a job, and they can go to school.
Mary Moriarty:
We can’t address violent crime unless we have reform. If you look at the numbers for carjacking, for instance, [Minneapolis police] was arresting 10 percent of people who are carjacking in Minneapolis. County-wide, it was 24 percent. One of the things we have to look at is what’s happening in those other 90 or 76 percent of cases, because the county attorney can’t hold anybody accountable unless they’re apprehended by the police. Why are the closure rates so low?
I’m a big database person and if those people are continuing to commit violent crimes, then obviously what they’re doing at the county attorney’s office isn’t working. But we actually don’t have that data. Nobody’s been telling us that data.
I am also a big believer in the Office of Violence Prevention through the public health department in Minneapolis. They really have only been funded for the last maybe three years and they only get a fraction of the money that they need. This also takes time—to train people and build out these services, and it’s going to take a while.
Saraswati Singh:
People often think that you have to choose between public safety and restorative justice, and that’s not the case. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office handles a wide range of cases, everything from murders and sexual assault all the way down to domestic assault, to DWIs to low-level property crime cases, low-level drug possession. Not every case needs a hammer.
The murder cases—obviously that’s a threat to public safety. Sexual assault—obviously that’s a threat to public safety. Drive by shootings or carjackings—those are really serious. But the portion of those cases in the criminal justice system is very small. They don’t feel that way because they’re all over the news and people get really scared from them, rightfully so.
In those low-level cases, I want to double the size of treatment courts. We have treatment courts called DWI court, drug court, mental health court, that focus on those core issues, and it requires defendants to do a lot more work. We require them to go to court every week rather than once a month. It requires them to do all these holistic things—inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment—to address the core issue.
We get a better result than in the criminal justice system and they are still held accountable. They may not have to do additional jail time, for example. It’s important to have alternatives available and lean in to them for folks that deserve it and are willing to put in the work. They have a pretty good success rate.
Martha Holton Dimick:
We have to work within the communities, and we have to have all eyes on the streets. We’ve lived in these communities long enough to know who the criminals are. We have to get into a situation where we have a way to share this information and not be retaliated against, because a lot of the conduct in the neighborhoods is due to gang violence.
We also have to build trust. The Minneapolis Police Department is gonna have to show us that they can be trusted and then there would be avenues that some of us can go to. Crimes that are being committed in my neighborhood, they’re committed by people who live in my neighborhood. If the people in my neighborhood happened to be Black, then that’s who’s committing these crimes. And I will prosecute anyone in my neighborhood who’s out here killing children, babies, and turning their neighborhood into the most frightening place to be.
We have to send messages that we will prosecute violent criminals. With that effort to defund the police, people sent the wrong message. Because right after George Floyd’s murder, you have these activists running around talking about defunding the police. That sent a wrong message to my community, because up went the crime over here.
As an aside, while my community members and these babies were being shot, you didn’t see any of those activists coming over here protesting like they did when the police shot a Black man. I ask the question, “Don’t Black lives matter in north Minneapolis?”
Data shows that the number one deterrent for crime is the belief that you will be caught and have some consequence. So what I would do is focus on working directly with law enforcement to investigate cases and try to bring prosecution of violent crime up.
That doesn’t mean we need longer sentences–that doesn’t make a difference to stop crime. It doesn’t mean that we should throw people in prison for the rest of their lives. It means that there has to be a consequence that is proportional and leaves open the opportunity for people to rehabilitate and start a different life when they have paid their debt.
I’ve already been helping to persuade the state to provide additional patrol resources, and the state is also working to bring suburban police resources not to patrol the streets necessarily in Minneapolis, but to help provide investigation backup and for the state to provide additional investigation backup.
That’s exactly why I’m running on safe streets and equal treatment for all. It’s a lie we keep telling ourselves and others that the prosecutor’s office alone can make the change. We’ve got to engage the other key stakeholders in the criminal justice system. That would include the public defender’s office, law enforcement, the judiciary, parole officers, certain community groups.
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of programs around the country that are working, that are reducing crime. I plan to establish different working groups that are charged with looking at what’s working around the country and then implementing. Each one of these working committees will be required to put out a quarterly report. There’s a working committee dealing with juveniles, non-violent low-level crime, violent crime, and recidivism.
Tad Jude:
The reform measures are determined by the legislature. Certainly any reforms that are put in place under Minnesota law would be implemented by the Hennepin County attorney. I would work and implement any and all reform measures that are passed by the legislature.
As a judge, I’ve always tried to make a good distinction between people who have a good chance at rehabilitation and treatment, and people who may have made one mistake but have a good prospect for the future versus others that are incorrigible and are not in a position to be rehabilitated and are creating a substantial public safety risk. That’s something I would try to do in a fair and unbiased manner.