Get Off My Neck

October 15, 2023
An impassioned indictment of governmental prosecutors for racial injustice. According to Hines, a trial lawyer, former prosecutor in Baltimore, and former assistant attorney general for Maryland, the prosecutor's office is "the most powerful institution in the criminal justice system." However, its major goal is to obtain convictions rather than advancing true justice or treating defendants with compassion. This also applies to police, who gather incriminating evidence and feed the accused into the prosecutorial system. Additional conviction opportunities come from plea-bargaining arrangements and the probation system, in which parolees are always at risk of being cited for violations and returned to court. Judges support these dynamics by rubber-stamping prosecutors' recommendations, and the conviction mentality also provides incentives for prosecutorial and police misconduct in a wide variety of situations. Making matters worse is the criminal justice system's inherent racism, with Black people more likely to be arrested, more likely to be given longer prison sentences, disproportionately denied bail, and more likely to be killed by the police. That 95% of non-federal prosecutors are white is part of the problem. As a leading advocate in the criminal-justice reform arena, Hines wants to change the culture, and she suggests better staffing to cut down on onerous workloads, racial bias training, integrity units to identify misconduct, more emphasis on diversion and restorative justice, increased attention to white collar crimes, Black-white pro-justice alliances, and the election of progressive prosecutors--e.g., Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and Marilyn Mosby (now out of office) in Baltimore. Hines supports her argument with governmental statistics, research studies, examples of prosecutorial overreach, and anecdotes from her courtroom experiences. Despite a somewhat untidy presentation and the wide scope of her accusations, this is an indictment with serious, presumptive validity. A forceful plea to reform the toxic entanglement of prosecution, policing, and probation in the criminal justice system.

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January 8, 2024
Hines, a former public prosecutor in Baltimore and now a private defense attorney, debuts with a scathing indictment of the criminal justice system. Mincing no words, she charges that the system is riddled with racism, populated by police officers with white supremacist views and by prosecutors who value convictions over justice. Hines provides ample evidence drawn from her own experiences in Baltimore’s courtrooms and gleaned from studies that show Black people are more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police, sentenced to longer prison terms, and victimized by police brutality. For example, she cites reports that officers in more than 100 police departments have been found to have sent racist emails, and that prosecutors are 50% more likely to charge Black people under habitual offender laws, which require harsher sentences. Among other pragmatic suggestions for countering the injustice embedded in the current system, Hines advises readers to join activist “court watcher” groups that attend trials and document their observations. While similar ground has been covered by others, what makes Hines’s account uniquely worthwhile is her detailed and intriguing behind-the-scenes analysis of how prosecutors operate. This passionate firsthand critique will appeal to those interested in criminal justice reform.