January 10, 2023
The Honorable Kevin McCarthy
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 20515

The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries
Minority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 2051

Re: Organizations oppose H.R. 27, the Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act
Dear Speaker McCarthy and Leader Jeffries:
On behalf of the Justice Roundtable and the undersigned organizations, we write toexpress our opposition to H.R. 27, the Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act.
Prosecutors are the most powerful players in the criminal legal system, with thediscretion to charge, request bail, make plea offers, and recommend sentences. Useof that discretion to over-punish or promote sentences disproportionate to the harmcaused has contributed to ballooning prison populations and racial disparities. Its
prudent exercise can be a tool for evidence-based reform by reducing the use ofunnecessary prosecutions and harsh sentences that do not lead to public safety.
Efforts to pressure prosecutors to use their discretion to send more people to prisonand seek longer sentences, such as the Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act, are athreat to justice, equity, and public safety. We urge Representatives to oppose thisbill.
The goal of H.R. 27 is clear: to pressure prosecutors to prosecute more cases moreharshly despite bipartisan concerns that the United States already incarcerates far
too many people for far too long. The bill mandates that prosecutor’s offices injurisdictions with populations over 380,000 disclose, for enumerated offenses,
information related to the number of cases referred by the police, declinations, bailrequests, plea bargains, an individual’s criminal history, and convictions. The bill
makes this reporting a requirement for funding under the Edward Byrne Memorial
Justice Assistance Grant Program (“Byrne”) and is based on a false premise thatfiling more criminal charges, detaining more people pre-trial, and making fewer
plea offers will make our communities safer. Meanwhile, the bill fails to require thecollection of data that would provide a robust picture of prosecutorial practices andavenues for reform.
The bill sets a dangerous precedent that lawmakers may condition future Byrne
funding on the way prosecutors wield their discretion. For example, Byrne funding
could be conditioned on having low declination rates, creating incentives to increase
incarceration rates and intruding on the constitutional duty of prosecutors to1

decline cases that they are unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The bill isalso designed to pressure prosecutors to seek harsher penalties. The power offederal funding incentives to increase incarceration is well-established: theincentives in the 1994 Crime Bill contributed to skyrocketing incarceration rates inthe 1990s. 1 Yet there is little evidence that these practices made America safer,even as they imposed drastic consequences, particularly on Black and Brown
communities.
Meanwhile, this bill does not address violent crime. The bill rests on the assumptionthat more pretrial incarceration and more prosecutions seeking harsher sentences
will increase public safety. Yet there is no evidence to support this. Research by theNAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund's Thurgood Marshall Institute foundthat non-reform prosecutors, the absence of bail reform, and increased police
budgets did not prevent cities from experiencing a homicide spike in 2020. 2 Even ifcollecting data on charging, declinations, bail recommendations, and plea offers
could help address violent crime, the Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act excludes
the portion of the country experiencing the greatest proportional increase in guncrime: rural America. 3 States that experienced some of the highest jumps in themurder rate from 2019 to 2020, such as Wyoming and South Dakota, would be
exempt from the bill’s reporting requirements because the population served bythose prosecuting offices fall below the 380,000 threshold. 4 A better approach to
public safety would be to invest in evidence-based approaches, such as non-carceral
crisis response, violence intervention, substance abuse treatment, lifting barriers toreentry for formerly-incarcerated people, and investments in education, housing,and job training.
Transparency in criminal legal system data is critical and there should bebipartisan efforts to improve data collection around arrests, prosecutions, andconvictions; however, the Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act is the wrong approachto achieve these goals. All communities should be able to hold their prosecutors
1 Lauren-Brooke Eisen, The 1994 Crime Bill and Beyond: How Federal Funding Shapes the Criminal

Justice Sytem, Brennan Center for Justice, Sep. 9, 2019, https://www.brennancenter.org/ourwork/analysis-opinion/1994-crime-bill-and-beyond-how-federal-funding-shapes-criminal-justice.
2 Kesha S. Moore, et al., Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
Inc.,The Truth Behind Crime Statistics (2022), https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/202208-03-TMI-Truth-in-Crime-Statistics-Report-FINAL-2.pdf.
3 David Correa & Nick Wilson, Gun Violence in Rural America, Center for American Progress, Sep.
26, 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun-violence-in-rural-america/
4 Kylie Murdock & Jim Kessler, The Red State Murder Problem, Third Way, Mar. 15, 2022,
https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem (reporting that two of the five stateswith the greatest murder rate increase from 2019 to 2020 were Wyoming at 91.7% and South Dakota
at 69%).

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accountable for their policies and actions. Prosecutors should disclose a wide arrayof data, including the demographics of those they prosecute. Experts have offeredvaluable models for how prosecutors can collect, monitor, and share data with theircommunities to improve safety, fairness, and equity. 5 Yet this bill fails to require
reporting of critical data needed to provide a full and accurate picture ofprosecutorial practices. As such, the bill would not only not result in realaccountability, but compliance would also come at the expense of reforms that are
more likely to contribute to public safety.
For the foregoing reasons, we urge Representatives to oppose the Prosecutors Needto Prosecute Act. If you have any questions, please contact Liz Komar, sentencing
reform counsel at the Sentencing Project (lkomar@sentencingproject.org) or Aamra
Ahmad, senior policy counsel at ACLU (aahmad@aclu.org).
Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
American Humanist Association
Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth
Center for Disability Rights
Center for Policing Equity
Church of Scientology National Affairs Office
Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE)
Civil Rights Corps
Color of Change
Defending Rights & Dissent
Drug Policy Alliance
Due Process Institute
Innocence Project
Jewish Council for Public Affairs
Justice Roundtable
Justice Strategies
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
The Sentencing ProjectSouthern Poverty Law Center Action Fund
Vera Institute of Justice
5 For example, https://prosecutorialperformanceindicators.org/

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