From left: Incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner and retired Municipal Court Judge Patrick Dugan
Photos: AP Photo/Matt Rourke and Judge Pat Dugan for District Attorney
Incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner and retired Municipal Court Judge Patrick Dugan shared their visions for one of the city’s top law enforcement offices.
By Denise Clay-Murray
If the forum they participated in at the String Theory Charter School in Center City was any indication, you probably shouldn’t invite incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner and his opponent, retired Municipal Court Judge Patrick Dugan, to the same parties.
The Democrats going head-to-head for the right to represent the party as the District Attorney designate butted heads over retail theft, prosecutor preparedness and cooperation within the justice system at the forum, which was sponsored by the SUN, the Philadelphia Crosstown Coalition, and the Logan Square Neighbors Association.
Whomever wins the primary will most likely be the DA because Philadelphia’s Republican Party has chosen not to field a candidate for the May 20 primary.
Taking questions from SUN publisher Catherine Hicks and Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, Krasner and Dugan shared their visions for the office.
There were places where they weren’t far apart. For example, both men believe that there should be interventions for young people to keep them out of the criminal justice system.
Dugan, who started his career in the law as a child advocate, believes that while young people should be held accountable for the things that they do, the interventions need to start earlier. When you peel back the layers of the circumstances that bring a young person into the Criminal Justice system, trauma is usually at its center, he said.
“We need to make sure that it starts when [these young people] are babies with helping families,” he said. “Now, not all of that falls on the District Attorney’s office. Unfortunately, some of these young, young people that are out there, and they’re walking around and they’re shooting four or five people. I mean, they have to be held accountable, but the vast majority of young people that are coming into the system, we need to treat them as children. That should be the starting point.”
Krasner agreed, pointing out that his office was already doing some of those things and more.
“The US. Supreme Court recognizes the brain is not fully developed until you’re about 25,” he said. “That means we can’t just stop on your 18th birthday. So, we started something that was never here before. It’s called the Emerging Adult Unit, which similarly has a wide range of educational treatment, job training options for young adults who get involved in adult cases. They need to be rehabilitated, too. And what we have found with these programs, the Emerging Adult Unit, many of our juvenile diversionary programs, are really good results. Having said that, there are juveniles who kill people, and they’re going to have their cases in many, many instances, almost all of them, resolved in adult court. One size does not fit all.”
But where they disagreed, they really disagreed. Like, for example, on what the job of the DA is. For Krasner, the most important function has nothing to do with locking people up.
“The number one job of the Philadelphia District Attorney, the oath itself, is to seek justice,” he said. “That’s the oath. It’s not just to prosecute people. And obviously, justice means not just consequences for people who do terrible things. It also means preventing those terrible things. It means making a country that is already the most heavily incarcerated big country in the world and also one of the most violent countries in the world safer and freer.”
“To me, the job of the District Attorney is to enforce the law, to hold people accountable, but at the same time, have some common sense about diversion programs, second chances and all that,” Dugan said.
They also disagreed on how the City could and should handle such things as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raids and other things connected to the Trump administration’s promised mass incarceration plans. While Dugan believes that the D.A.’s office couldn’t do much to help immigrants impacted by ICE raids, Krasner, a longtime critic of President Donald Trump, promised action.
Neither man addressed Act 40, the law passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature that appointed a special prosecutor to handle gun violence cases that occurred within 500 feet of a SEPTA stop.
May 5 is the last day to register to vote in the May 20 primary.
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