John Legend wants to transform the criminal justice system, one DA at a time

John Legend poses backstage throughout the LDF 34th National Equal Justice Awards Dinner on May 10, 2022 in New York City.

Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund

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Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund

John Legend poses backstage throughout the LDF 34th National Equal Justice Awards Dinner on May 10, 2022 in New York City.

Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund

John Legend is an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award-winning entertainer, who lately kicked off a Las Vegas residency and simply launched a new single. But he is additionally a well-known activist and advocate for criminal justice reform and voting rights who has supported a variety of Democratic candidates over the years.

He’s additionally throwing his help behind a variety of progressive prosecutors who’re operating on a promise to reform a criminal justice system that they are saying is outdated and that disproportionately punishes and over incarcerates individuals of colour.

Legend, who has a mammoth following on Twitter, lately shined a highlight on district legal professional races in Tennessee, North Carolina, Oregon and California – arguing that these elections are “crucial to improving our criminal legal system.”

Most progressive prosecutors, like the ones Legend is endorsing, help eliminating the loss of life penalty, limiting prosecutions for low-level offenses and ending money bail.

“The fact that these prosecutors are going into office with the intent, with the goal of making communities safer but also making them healthier and stronger and not overusing incarceration as a tool to do so, makes them more progressive than what we’ve had in the past,” Legend mentioned.

In an interview with NPR’s Juana Summers, Legend discusses progressive prosecutors, the criminal justice system and President Biden’s method to policing.

These interview highlights include some extra content material that didn’t air in the broadcast model.

Interview highlights

Races for district legal professional usually are not the type of campaigns that sometimes get a ton of consideration. Was there a second that made you need to concentrate on prosecutors?

Prosecutors have a lot affect over who will get charged, over what they get charged with, over what sorts of punishment is pursued, what sorts of jail time and bail quantities. And for a lot too lengthy, they had been operating unopposed, operating with out a lot consideration devoted to their elections and operating mainly with type of a one-note attraction: “We’re tough on crime. We’re going to lock more people up. We’re going to put the bad guys in jail.” And that is all that they had to say.

So we determined we must always begin shining a mild on these native elections and we must always begin encouraging the concept that we may have extra progressive prosecutors in place in these communities. And it could truly make a massive distinction once we’re pursuing the purpose of “decarceration” and investing in different options that may assist our communities turn into stronger and more healthy.

When I appeared on-line and noticed the candidates that you just had been tweeting about, they’re typically girls or individuals of colour – and we must always simply be frank right here that traditionally, prosecutors, district attorneys, they’ve largely been white males. What profit do you see to increasing the sorts of people who find themselves in these jobs?

Look at somebody like Kim Fox, who we have supported twice and she or he’s been reelected in Cook County, which is Chicago. She is aware of her neighborhood so properly. She’s a Black lady and she or he has seen all sides of our criminal authorized system. She’s a lawyer. She’s a prosecutor, however she additionally is aware of relations and neighborhood members which have been on the different facet of issues who’ve been locked up. She is aware of of us who’ve been survivors and victims of crime, and she or he is aware of what it is like to develop up in a few of our most challenged communities. Someone with that perspective, somebody who has an intimate data of the neighborhood that she’s serving and that she comes from, they’re coming to it with an expertise and a stage of empathy that I believe is admittedly useful.

When you method the job of being a prosecutor extra holistically and extra progressively, it means you are serious about the results of all of this. You’re not simply attempting to lock extra individuals up for extra time. You’re serious about the households that these of us go away behind and the unfavourable cycle that that continues when you’ve one or two of your dad and mom locked up and what impact that can have on the child and whether or not or not they’re going to be extra doubtless to commit crime in the future as a result of they’ve misplaced a father or mother to incarceration.

So you are serious about extra of these issues. You have a stage of empathy and understanding that’s higher and extra linked to the neighborhood. And I believe it allows you to make higher choices that will probably be holistically extra useful for the neighborhood.

We cannot have this dialog with out speaking a bit about crime charges, that are on the rise in lots of locations throughout this nation. Politically, many opponents of progressive prosecutors search to draw a hyperlink between the insurance policies of these prosecutors and rising crime charges. They’re basically making the level that these type of progressive approaches are fostering lawlessness in communities. What do you say to these individuals?

Crime actually did go up throughout the pandemic, and it went up in communities all throughout the nation. Poverty went up, unemployment went up throughout 2020 and 2021. And so a lot of these items had been massive macro situations that modified in all of our communities, whether or not they had a progressive prosecutor or not. And the proof exhibits that there is no hyperlink between having extra progressive prosecutors and crime going up any extra so than it went up in communities that did not have one. But crime has gone up. And so we have now to be empathetic to of us who’re seeing extra homelessness of their communities. They’re seeing extra despair, they’re seeing extra psychological well being points, extra drug dependency of their communities. And they’re saying, we have to do one thing about this.

John Legend performs onstage throughout the 64th Annual Grammy Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 3, 2022 in Las Vegas.

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

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Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

John Legend performs onstage throughout the 64th Annual Grammy Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 3, 2022 in Las Vegas.

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

We want to empathize with of us who’re feeling that and seeing that as a result of it’s actual. The answer is not, we’d like to be extra punitive as a society. The answer is, we’d like to work on all these points that trigger despair, that trigger poverty, that trigger meals insecurity, that trigger housing insecurity. Focus on these areas, spend money on these areas and never in a extra punitive criminal authorized system.

You had been amongst the artists and entertainers who carried out throughout inaugural occasions for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. I would like to ask you about how the president and his administration have positioned themselves on these points. We heard the president lately urging cities and states to spend extra unspent COVID reduction cash to pay for extra crime prevention packages and hiring extra officers.

I do not agree with that advice. We already spend more cash on policing in America than every other nation spends on their army, other than the United States and China. So if spending the most on policing had been the answer to make us secure, we’d already be the most secure nation in the world. If spending extra on incarceration had been going to be the answer to make us extra secure, we’d be the most secure nation in the world, however we’re not.

So possibly we must always take into account spending that cash on issues that will probably be extra edifying and truly forestall extra crime. Things like combating meals insecurity, coping with individuals’s psychological well being points, coping with individuals with substance abuse points, discovering different interventions that can make our communities safer and more healthy. We already try the concept of spending the most on policing and the most on jailing and incarcerating individuals. Why do not we strive another concepts?

We ought to simply acknowledge right here that we’re having this dialog in the wake of the mass capturing in the predominantly Black a part of Buffalo, N.Y. and that has sparked and renewed this dialog about security and racial disparities in policing, which appears tied very intently to the work that you just’re doing.

We cannot speak about any of this with out speaking about weapons. So if you consider the issues that we’re OK with in America. We spend all this cash on policing, we spend all this cash on jailing and incarcerating individuals, however we even have such a permissive gun tradition that we have now extra weapons on this nation than human beings.

So once we evaluate ourselves to different nations and we’re questioning why we’re not the most secure nation in the world regardless of spending a lot on policing, regardless of spending a lot on incarceration, maybe the cause is that so many individuals have such easy accessibility to weapons and such a vary of weapons with such a vary of capacities out there to anyone who wants them.

Why is an 18 12 months previous strolling round with an AR-15? Why is an 18 12 months previous being uncovered to this “great replacement” idea on Fox News and on different areas on the web and in all through tradition with out there being some type of test on the availability of that type of indoctrination and rhetoric? Why? Why? Why? So if we actually need to be safer, we’d like to look at gun tradition. We want to look at a few of this hate speech that’s is grooming future terrorists and actually concentrate on these areas – concentrate on truly making us safer and making our communities more healthy.

When you consider the span of your profession thus far, your advocacy, your activism. Who are the fashions which have formed your method?

Harry Belafonte, Paul Robeson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin. Some of them had been extra seen, a few of them had been behind the scenes funding activists and funding the motion, and a few of them made music that spoke instantly to it. Some of them once more had been extra behind the scenes. But all of them knew that they had been in a distinctive place. They had been in a distinctive place of energy and affect. And they used that affect to battle for justice and make change and battle for equality.