• Establish a Conviction-Integrity Unit. Convicting the wrong people for violent crimes is not just morally repugnant; it's stupid, because when the wrong people are convicted, the guilty ones, by definition, go free. Like innovative prosecutors elsewhere, we need to establish an independent wrongful-conviction unit in the prosecutor's office to work with groups like the Innocence Project to correct injustices and to ensure that the true perpetrators are brought to justice. We need a prosecutor who wants to seek justice, not bury his head in the sand.
• Depoliticize the Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors are entrusted with incredible authority that puts people at risk of losing life, liberty, and property. The public deserves to know that that authority is being exercised with impartiality and integrity. That’s why Mr. Chandra, on Day One of becoming County Prosecutor, will issue a Code of Conduct for the office for all Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office employees that prohibits them, among other things, from holding a partisan elected office, or a position in a political party, and fundraising for partisan political candidates. The Code of Conduct is based on what the U.S. Department of Justice demands from its employees, and we should expect and demand nothing less from county prosecutors. This is the culture in which Mr. Chandra was trained as a federal prosecutor, and it is the culture that he will bring to the County Prosecutor’s Office. Mr. Chandra has urged his fellow candidates to pledge that they too will issue this proposed Code of Conduct to ensure that politics—and even the appearance of politics—do not compromise the Office’s integrity. The county’s citizens deserve a Prosecutor’s Office that is focused on justice, not furthering anyone’s political ambitions.
• Protect us from re-entering ex-offenders by ensuring they are economically productive. With nearly a quarter of Ohio's inmates returning to Cuyahoga County, we need to establish public and private partnerships to ensure that an inmate’s re-entry into the community is a part of a process designed to keep them from re-establishing criminal patterns of conduct. We need a prosecutor who leads this effort.
• Take science seriously and reform forensic-scientific practices. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report declaring that most forensic science in America is in serious need for reform. The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, under then Dean Geoffrey S. Mearns (a former Oklahoma City bombing prosecutor and Chandra's former colleague), convened the first national conference, which Chandra attended, to discuss the report. It is clear that the County and Ohio's forensic-science practices are in serious need of reform to bring them into the 21st Century. Chandra will work with the Ohio attorney general and lead on this.
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• Establish a Public-Integrity Unit to address corruption. The county prosecutor's office presently has no unit dedicated to rooting out public corruption. That void forced federal authorities to step in to address corruption in the county. As the only former federal prosecutor in the race, Chandra will address this void by establishing a special unit dedicated to investigating and prosecuting public corruption.
• Stop politicizing the death penalty. Politicians like to brag about how their death penalty is bigger than the next guy's. Wait for it in this race. Subodh Chandra won't do that. The death penalty, the ultimate irreversible punishment, requires sober-minded prosecutors interested in doing justice and getting it right, not showing off. An American Bar Association report recommended that there be a moratorium on the death penalty in Ohio. Chandra will evaluate that report and the Prosecutor's Office performance and practices in an open-minded way.
• Tamp down on truancy and stave off the supply of future criminals. Studies show truancy leads to criminal activity. We need a prosecutor who takes truancy seriously and who leads an effort, in partnership with schools and teachers unions, to clamp down on truancy, thereby shutting down much of the criminal pipeline. Elsewhere, such efforts slashed truancy by over 30%, thus staving off the pipeline to crime.
• Focusing on treatment to drop drug demand. Our prisons and courthouses are filled with petty, pointless, minor drug crimes. While we should continue to have zero tolerance for hard drugs and their trafficking, treatment is far more often a more effective and less expensive approach for lesser offenses like small possession. We need a prosecutor who leads this effort.
Check back again for more ideas as the campaign unfolds.
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