How to be a better prosecutor | Cyrus Vance | TED Goes to Prison at Coxsackie Correctional Facility 2022

Cyrus Vance was the Manhattan District Attorney for three consecutive terms between 2010 and 2021. He is now in private practice and a partner at Baker & McKenzie in New York City, leading its global cyber security practice. As the Manhattan district attorney, Cy led many criminal justice reform efforts, including creating the Criminal Justice Investment Initiative which invested $250 million dollars in criminal forfeiture funds to support college programming in prison throughout New York State, families and youth at risk of criminal justice involvement, and re-entry initiatives for citizens returning home from prison. Last November, Cy’s office exonerated two men wrongfully convicted of killing Malcolm X in the 1960s.

Are you thinking about justice reform? | Dan Satterberg | TEDxWashingtonCorrectionsCenterforWomen 2015

Dan Satterberg asks us to think about the by products of mass incarceration and whether we will continue to build and fill prisons or seek solution strategies for reform. He suggests that the criminal justice system, judges, legislators, prosecutors, and citizens step back and look more broadly at the collateral consequences of incarceration and investigate alternatives for each. Dan Satterberg was elected King County Prosecuting Attorney in Washington state in November 2007. The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office employs more than 225 attorneys, 240 staff, and has a budget of nearly $68 million. Before 1990, Dan was a trial attorney in the Criminal Division, where he spent rotations in the Special Assault Unit, Drug Unit, and served as the office’s first gang prosecutor in 1988. Dan was born and raised in South King County and attended Highline High School. He graduated from the University of Washington Law School, where he met his wife Linda, a corporate lawyer.

Hacking our justice system | George Gascon | TEDxIronwoodStatePrison 2014

George Gascón is the 43rd District Attorney for Los Angeles County. He took office on Dec. 7, 2020, and immediately instituted a series of policies based on science, data and research to bring change within the criminal legal system. He is working to build a national model of criminal justice reform that supports and restores crime victims and survivors while addressing mass incarceration, racism and social systemic inequities. Throughout these historic reforms, public safety has been the overriding priority. On his first day in office, Gascón ended the use of the death penalty as a sentence in Los Angeles County; stopped charging children as adults; eliminated many sentencing enhancements that do not benefit public safety and contribute to mass incarceration; and removed cash bail for misdemeanor or nonserious or nonviolent felony offenses under California law as determined by the California Supreme Court in its People v. Humphrey decision. In 1967, at the age of 13, Gascón boarded a “freedom flight” with his mother and father from Havana, Cuba, to Miami. They had nothing more than the clothes on their backs and a change of underwear that they carried in a cardboard suitcase. Within a week his family moved to Southeast Los Angeles to settle in Cudahy. As a monolingual Spanish speaker, Gascón struggled to keep up with schoolwork and he ultimately dropped out of high school and started bagging groceries. Once he turned 18, Gascón joined the U.S. Army and quickly became the youngest sergeant in his brigade. He earned his high school diploma while simultaneously taking college extension courses, and after earning a history degree from Cal State Long Beach, Gascón got a job as a patrol officer in the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.Over the next three decades, he worked his way up the ranks of the LAPD from patrol officer to Assistant Chief of Police under Bill Bratton. As Assistant Chief, he oversaw operations for the more than 9,000 LAPD officers, overseeing major homicide and gang investigations and weeding out corruption following the infamous Rampart scandal. Then, in 2006, he was tapped to be Chief of Police in Mesa, Arizona, where he stood up to the hateful and anti-immigrant policies of then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In 2009, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Gascón to be San Francisco’s Chief of Police. Two years later, Newsom again turned to Gascón to fill a vacancy created when then-District Attorney Kamala Harris was elected California Attorney General. Gascón was re-elected San Francisco District Attorney twice. He was the first Latino to hold that office, and the nation’s first Police Chief to become District Attorney. In the many positions Gascón has held throughout his career – from Assistant Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department to Chief of Police in Mesa, Arizona, and San Francisco, and District Attorney for San Francisco and Los Angeles Counties – his commitment to fairness, service and public safety has remained steadfast. Gascón has led the growing movement of progressive prosecutors. He was the first District Attorney in the nation to call for an end of cash bail and to launch an automatic record clearing program for marijuana convictions following legalization and the only District Attorney in California to support a state law that created a stricter standard for when police can use deadly force. Gascón never shied away from holding the powerful accountable, creating the state’s first independent investigation bureau to enhance transparency and limit the conflict of interest that occurs when police investigate themselves in the aftermath of a critical incident. He has earned a national reputation as a visionary in criminal justice reform. Today, Gascón and his work are defined by the same notions of fairness, public safety, service and critical thought that have been consistent throughout his life. In addition to his criminal justice work at the local, state and national levels, Gascón has worked on public safety initiatives in Latin America and the Middle East. He is a board member of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a graduate of the FBI’s National Executive Institute and a member of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety. After serving two terms as San Francisco District Attorney, he returned to Los Angeles to care for his elderly mother and to be closer to his daughters and grandchildren in Long Beach. He entered the race for District Attorney to enhance the safety and livability of Los Angeles and bring equal justice to his hometown. Gascón is married to Fabiola Kramsky, a three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and recipient of the “Premio Nacional de Periodismo,” the highest recognition given to journalists in Mexico. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from California State University, Long Beach, and a Juris Doctor Degree from Western State University, College of Law.