We Don't Have to Choose

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose features conversations with Sarah Davis, Morgan Kunz, and Josh Peterson reflecting on the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office’s approach to responding to auto theft committed by young people.

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features Arlington County Prosecutor Parisa Dehgahni-Tafti and Philidelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church. Parisa was first elected to a four-year term in November 2019, followed by being elected to her second consecutive term in 2023 where she will serve until 2027. She came to the Office of Commonwealth’s Attorney with a twenty-year record of criminal justice reform as an innocence protection attorney, a public defender, and a law professor. Parisa sought the Office because, in her own words, "I always knew what I hoped for in a justice system, and so I finally decided to live inside that hope." Prior to being elected Commonwealth’s Attorney, Parisa served as an innocence protection attorney representing innocent individuals in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, as a public defender litigating cases of constitutional magnitude, and as a law professor helping train the next generation of criminal law attorneys. Parisa earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She resides in Arlington with her family. She enjoys reading Jane Austen and James Baldwin and has an abiding attachment to Star Trek. Larry was born in 1961 in St. Louis, the son of a World War II veteran father and minister mother. After attending public schools in St. Louis and the Philadelphia area, Larry earned degrees from the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School. While at Stanford, rather than focusing on corporate law, Larry worked for indigenous rights, homeless people, and the poor, in criminal matters. After graduating in 1987, he received several job offers from prosecutors’ offices around the country but instead chose to return to Philadelphia to work as a public defender. During his first two terms as District Attorney, Larry has supported victims, he has exonerated the innocent, and he has held police accountable. He has reduced future years of incarceration and supervision while helping to drop the jail population. He has focused on the most serious crimes in Philadelphia while working with leaders to address the root causes of violence. He has kept kids out of adult court and kept them home. And he has fought against the powerful, like drug companies and those who steal from workers. Larry lives in Philadelphia with his wife of 37 years.

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features independent journalist Jessica Pishko. Jessica Pishko is an independent journalist and lawyer who has been writing about the criminal legal system for a decade with a focus on the political power of law enforcement officials. Since 2018, she has been focused on American sheriffs and their role—past and present—in perpetuating mass incarceration and white supremacy as well as how sheriffs present a growing threat to democracy in this country. Previously, Pishko was a fellow at the Rule of Law Collaborative at the University of South Carolina, researching sheriff accountability. She has received grants from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and Type Investigations. Her work has appeared in the New York Times op-ed section, Politico, Slate, the Atlantic, and the Appeal. In addition, her newsletter on sheriffs and their political power has been recognized by the NYU American Journalism Online Awards.

This episode of We Don't Have to Choose features Dr. Robert Kinscherff, Executive Director of the Center of Law, Brain, and Behavior at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kinscherff was a contributor to the amicus brief submitted to the US Supreme Court by the American Psychological Association (APA) in Roper v. Simmons (2005) and has been involved in bringing science to juvenile and criminal justice reform since that time. As a Fellow of the APA, Dr. Kinscherff’s service has included Chair of the Ethics Committee, Chair of the Committee on Legal Issues, and Board of Professional Affairs. He has also held prominent roles in APA projects involving public health approaches to gun violence, mass shootings, juvenile solitary confinement, developing practice, and liaison to the American Bar Association. Between 2008and 2021 he served as Senior Consultant for the National Center for Youth Opportunity and Justice (previously the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice) where he worked on several MacArthur Foundation Models for Change projects. Read the CLBB White Paper on the Science of Late Adolescence here: https://clbb.mgh.harvard.edu/white-paper-on-the-science-of-late-adolescence/

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features internationally recognized criminologist, bestselling author, and leading voice in violence prevention Dr. James Densley.Dr. James Densley is Professor and Department Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Metro State University and Co-Founder of The Violence Prevention Project Research Center ("The Violence Project") at Hamline University. A former NYC Teaching Fellow and middle school special education teacher, Densley has authored nine books and edited two others, including The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic—winner of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award and described as "groundbreaking." His research has been featured by global media and published in 70+ scientific journals and 100+ popular outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, TIME, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Densley earned a DPhil and MSc in Sociology from the University of Oxford (St. Antony's College), an MS in Teaching from Pace University, and a first-class honors BA in Sociology and American Studies from the University of Northampton. He has helped secure more than $10 million in research funding and is known for pioneering studies on street gangs, criminal networks, mass shootings, and policing. In 2019, he was named Metro State’s first University Scholar.

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis. Alec is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. He has pioneered constitutional civil rights cases to challenge the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States. Alec graduated from Yale College in 2005 with a degree in Ethics, Politics, & Economics and Harvard Law School in 2008, where he was a Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Before founding Civil Rights Corps, Alec was a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia; a federal public defender in Alabama, representing impoverished people accused of federal crimes; and co-founder of the organization Equal Justice Under Law. His books, Copaganda and Unusual Cruelty unpack the ways the legal system re-entrenches many of the inequities it seeks to remedy.

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features investigative journalist Radley Balko. Radley Balko reports on criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties. He was a senior writer and investigative reporter at the Huffington Post, and a reporter and senior editor for Reason magazine, and investigative reporter for the Washington Post. He is author of the books "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" and "The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South" (co-authored with Tucker Carrington). His work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Mississippi Supreme Court and two federal appeals courts. He also occasionally writes about the music and culture of Nashville, where he lives. His substack, The Watch, boasts 27,000 subscribers to his reporting and commentary work.

This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features the executive director of the National Network for Safe Communities, Sasha Cotton. Sasha joined the National Network for Safe Communities in September 2022 as a Senior Strategy Director and has spent the fifteen months getting to know NNSC’s partners, work, and staff, with a vision and plan to strengthen and grow the organization before becoming the Executive Director.

Episode 4 of We Don't Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features Professor James Forman Jr. James Forman Jr. is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He attended public schools in Detroit and New York City before graduating from the Atlanta Public Schools. After attending Brown University and Yale Law School, he worked as a law clerk for Judge William Norris of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court. After clerking, he joined the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., where for six years he represented both juveniles and adults charged with crimes. At Yale Law School, where he has taught since 2011, Forman teaches Constitutional Law and a course called Race, Class, and Punishment. Professor Forman has written many law review articles, in addition to op-eds and essays for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the Nation, and the Washington Post. Locking Up Our Own is his first book.

Episode 3 of We Don't Have to Choose with Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty features nationally renowned crime data analyst and co-founder of AH Analytics, Jeff Asher. Jeff served as the crime analyst for the city of New Orleans and has served on both the local and national level. His work has been featured on multiple outlets like fivethirtyeight and the NY times.

Episode 2 of “We Don’t Have to Choose” with Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty features therapist and trauma specialist Dr. Resmaa Menakem.This episode focuses on understanding how the legal system deals with racial trauma. As a practitioner of Somatic Abolitionism, Dr Menakem and County Attorney Moriarty peel back layers to get at the core of the legal system’s relationship with racial trauma, and discuss ways we can do better.https://resmaa.comhttps://blackoctopussociety.com

Rachel Barkow is the Charles Seligson Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Zimroth Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU. Professor Barkow teaches courses in criminal law, administrative law, and constitutional law. Her book, Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration, was published by Harvard University Press/Belknap in the spring of 2019. She has written more than 40 articles and essays that span a range of topics including the relationship between modern sentencing laws and the constitutional role of the criminal jury.