Farewell to All That

This letter, posted at RealClearPolitics, from longtime Cook County prosecutor Jason Poje makes for depressing reading. He’s not the first prosecutor to resign and I doubt he will be the last. Here’s a snippet:

The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster. And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that had the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.

Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of these so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation.

Read the whole thing. One point that he makes is worth repeating. Our legal system is adversarial. In it defense attorneys defend and prosecutors prosecute. When defense attorneys defend and prosecutors defend, the system can’t work.