Prosecutors pitch criminal justice reforms 'Shark Tank' style at Vanderbilt Law School

Six prosecutors’ offices from across the country came to Vanderbilt University Law School’s campus Oct. 17 to pitch ways to make the criminal legal system more efficient, more supportive of victims and less punitive for defendants.

Dubbed "Shark Tank for Justice,” the event was created and hosted by the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy (VPOPP), which was created in November 2023, and the Justice Innovation Lab.

VPOPP Director and Vanderbilt Law School research professor Alissa Marque Heydari said the goal was for people to identify a problem in their prosecuting attorneys’ offices, bring together the right people, and then come up with a solution that can be measured.

The groups came from Douglas County, Georgia, outside Atlanta; Augusta, Georgia; Salt Lake County, Utah; King County, Washington, home to Seattle; Suffolk County, Massachusetts, home to Boston; and Pine County, Minnesota.

Their problems included crime victims being not helped or included in the legal process (King County), courts being overwhelmed with low-level offenses associated with homelessness and drug use (Salt Lake County), and defendants spending long amounts of time in jail pretrial (Augusta).

Jared Fishman, founder and executive director of the Justice Innovation Lab, said the criminal justice system is “broken.” He said he was confident the groups would implement the proposals they presented Oct. 17.

“Now comes the most important part: to go out into the world and do justice,” Fishman said.

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