New Podcast: Rethinking Public Safety, A Conversation with Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution, Miriam Krinsky

In the third episode of the Discussions with DPIC podcast’s Rethinking Public Safety series, Miriam Krinsky (pic­tured) speaks with DPIC Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue about her expe­ri­ences as a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and the Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), a net­work of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors devot­ed to pro­mot­ing fair­ness, equi­ty, com­pas­sion, and fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty in the crim­i­nal legal system.

Krinsky and Ndulue explore a range of issues dur­ing the pod­cast, includ­ing the injus­tice of the death penal­ty, the pow­er of pros­e­cu­tors to cre­ate change, the evolv­ing rela­tion­ship between pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment, the impor­tance of trans­paren­cy and pub­lic account­abil­i­ty, and myths about pub­lic safe­ty. ​“In my mind,” Krinsky says, ​“elim­i­nat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment improves public safety.”

Krinsky’s expo­sure to the real­i­ties of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem dur­ing her career as a pros­e­cu­tor — from wrong­ful con­vic­tions to hor­rif­ic racial dis­par­i­ties, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, and inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel — has strength­ened her oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“I always philo­soph­i­cal­ly had deep con­cerns about the notion that as a gov­ern­ment, as a state, and as a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, we should sanc­tion the tak­ing of some­body’s life. But over the years, what I’ve seen has deep­ened that view,” she says. 

Krinsky spent 15 years as a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and has served on numer­ous com­mis­sions, work­ing on inves­ti­gat­ing and reform­ing the legal sys­tem. In the pod­cast, Krinsky describes how her back­ground as an immi­grant and daugh­ter of a Holocaust sur­vivor ingrained in her a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty to serve her com­mu­ni­ty, which pushed her toward a career in public service. 

“Prosecutors fun­da­men­tal­ly con­trol the front door of the jus­tice sys­tem,” Krinsky says. ​“They have this unbe­liev­able amount of clout to chart the course for some­body’s future, for bet­ter or for worse, and in doing so to rede­fine a vision for safer and health­i­er com­mu­ni­ties that parts com­pa­ny with the decades of tough on crime puni­tive respons­es.” This phi­los­o­phy guides the pur­pose of FJP, which cre­ates a net­work of elect­ed lead­ers that can be ​“the dri­ving force behind change in the crim­i­nal legal system.” 

One change Krinsky believes is nec­es­sary is end­ing the reliance on unnec­es­sar­i­ly harsh pun­ish­ments. The United States is ​“the only Western nation that con­tin­ues to abide by a sys­tem of exe­cu­tion,” she says, and has the high­est incar­cer­a­tion rate in the world. The sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment should ​“trou­ble us as a nation,” Krinsky urges, ​“because we are pay­ing a lot of mon­ey for a sys­tem that no one has been able clear­ly to show is a deter­rent.” Ultimately, ​“this is a failed sys­tem,” she told Ndulue. 

Krinsky con­cludes that elim­i­nat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment will pro­mote pub­lic safe­ty. ​“If we are doing things in the name of pub­lic safe­ty that are failed, that don’t work, and that aren’t moral­ly sound, then we’ve lost the trust of our com­mu­ni­ty, and we’ve lost our moral compass.”

On June 30, 2021, Krinsky co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post with Washington, D.C. attor­ney gen­er­al Karl A. Racine and Arlington County, Virginia com­mon­wealth’s attor­ney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti urg­ing President Biden to fol­low through on his cam­paign promise to work to abol­ish the fed­er­al death penal­ty. “[T]here is no more dra­mat­ic exam­ple of sys­temic racism in crim­i­nal jus­tice than [cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment],” they wrote. ​“Historians have found that exe­cu­tions took hold in the ear­ly 1900s as a way to sat­is­fy lynch mobs and quell crit­i­cism that the killing of Black peo­ple before cheer­ing audi­ences was under­min­ing America’s image on the world stage. As the era of lynch­ings slow­ly came to an end, the use of the death penalty accelerated.”

The op-ed not­ed that “[i]n both fed­er­al and state cas­es, the death penal­ty is used dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly against peo­ple who receive defi­cient legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and who are poor, men­tal­ly ill, trau­ma­tized or intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. For more than 40 years, many have tried to make America’s death penal­ty sys­tem just. If it were pos­si­ble, we would have done it by now. It is long past time to end this failed experiment.”

“Biden can and must do some­thing about our flawed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem,” Krinsky, Racine, and Dehghani-Tafti wrote. ​“We urge him to keep his cam­paign pledge and end the fed­er­al death penal­ty now by com­mut­ing all fed­er­al cap­i­tal sen­tences, direct­ing the Justice Department to no longer seek these sen­tences and dis­man­tling the government’s machin­ery of death. This is a nec­es­sary step on the road to address­ing sys­temic racism. If we can do this, we will final­ly begin build­ing the jus­tice sys­tem that we all deserve: one ground­ed in equi­ty, fair­ness and proven strate­gies to keep communities safe.”