The Marshall Project

the Prosecutors

Court Watch NYC is the latest local group monitoring the criminal justice system as it happens.

After years of focusing efforts on private prisons, mandatory sentences and money bail, people trying to change the criminal justice system have identified another target: prosecutors. In an influential book last year, Fordham University professor John Pfaff argued prosecutors were the main driver behind the soaring U.S. incarceration rate — almost always unwatched and unopposed. Left-leaning philanthropist George Soros and the ACLU, among others, are recruiting and funding district attorney candidates who promise to curtail the use of the death penalty, expand diversion programs and stop prosecuting low-level crimes. There is even a new stab at a Progressive Prosecutor’s Handbook.

Still, what district attorneys say in

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