Accountability for Prosecutors

Senate Bill 1070, An Act Concerning Prosecutorial Accountability, seeks to provide more oversight and transparency for prosecutors. The entire criminal legal system needs accountability and outside oversight. State’s attorneys are some of the most powerful but least accountable actors in Connecticut’s criminal legal system.

1. Shortening the term length for state’s attorneys from 8 years to 5 years, more in line with other positions in the Division of Criminal Justice and with national standards.
2. Requiring each state’s attorney to go before the Criminal Justice Commission each year for testimony and comment on the case level data already collected by the state’s prosecutorial transparency law  (this data is anonymized, so people involved in a criminal legal case have their privacy protected).
3. Creating publicly available biennial reports summarizing each state’s attorney’s performance, based upon data already collected by the state.

Email your legislators and tell them to support S.B. 1070 now. 
 

Submit public testimony. There will be two opportunities to provide testimony:

1. To make this law work, the Criminal Justice Commission – an independent body that is not part of the Division of Criminal Justice – must be fully resourced to be able to hold annual judicial district assessments. The appropriations committee would be in charge of this funding. You can testify at the appropriations subcommittee public hearing on February 24, at 6:00 p.m. We have prepared model testimony to support funding the Criminal Justice Commission.
2. At the Judiciary Committee public hearing in March. We have prepared sample testimony to support the bill as a whole.

1. The entire criminal legal system needs accountability and outside oversight. State’s attorneys are some of the most powerful but least accountable actors in Connecticut’s criminal legal system. 
2. Prosecutors hold people’s lives in their hands. They have the power to decrease or perpetuate mass incarceration in Connecticut, and to end or perpetuate racial disparities in convictions. 
3. This bill is a way to put a check and balance within the scales of justice.
4. Fairness shouldn’t depend on zip code. Yet in Connecticut right now, each judicial district, which answers to a different state’s attorney, treats people accused of a crime and people who are victims of crime very differently. 
5. Here are five reasons why we need accountability for state’s attorneys.

1. Prosecutors are some of the most powerful actors in the criminal legal system and among the least accountable to the public. 
2. Connecticut state’s attorneys serve 8-year terms, longer terms than in 47 states  and longer than the chief state’s attorney and deputy chief state’s attorneys serve. These term lengths are extreme outliers across the country.
3. During those 8 year terms, there is no opportunity for public input or Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) oversight of their performance.
4. There is not a single GA (geographical area) court in the state without a racial disparity in conviction rates. In every single GA court, because of systemic racism, Black people are convicted more often than white people.
5. Stamford and Norwalk experience the largest racial disparities. In Stamford, 47 percent of Black people accused of a crime were convicted, compared to 30 percent of white people. In Norwalk, 44 percent of Black people accused of a crime were convicted, compared to 27 percent of white people.
6. Outcomes in Connecticut’s criminal legal system today largely depend on where someone is. For decades, experts have warned that it is a serious threat to fairness.