Leesa Manion: I believe in the power of diversion. My proudest moments have been keeping our young people out of the court system. I am proud to be a co-founding partner of Choose 180. I have seen not just the data, but I have also heard directly from the young people who have said diversion changed their lives. Being connected to the community, having a new path forward, is the thing that turned around the life of their family and their own life. So I believe in the power of diversion.

I will continue refiling diversion. I just want to address something really quick that my opponent said because I don't want to lose this thought he was talking about: How it's the prosecutor's job to find the truth. And I agree with that. But I think our challenge is that we have to expand what we think of as true. Because when you are black and you are marginalized and you speak with an accent, people do not believe that you are telling the truth. We have to turn that around. I do believe our job is to find the truth. Absolutely. But we all have to be aware of our implicit and explicit bias so that we can do a better job

Now getting back to diversion, I do want to talk a little bit about Restorative Community Pathways in our state. Under state law, we have mandatory diversion for all juvenile first time misdemeanor crimes. It's been the law of our state since 1978. And right now we have a program called Restorative Community Pathways. It is our most modern and well funded version of juvenile diversion. So it meets our state obligation, but it also allows us to handle some first time nonviolent felony matters. It's really important and I want to emphasize this because I care about public safety just like everybody in this room. Nonviolent, no serious injury, no weapons, no harm to people. So Restorative Community Pathways is one that serves young people in their community in their homes on nights and on weekends, in a culturally relevant way because the King County Executive has hired nine community based nonprofits to do that work with us. We also know that it's working because it has an 8% recidivism rate compared to 22% for traditional prosecution.

The reason that we know that it works and the reason that we know what happens to these young people is because we know their names, and some of them come back to us. And that's just the truth. And that's why we know that the recidivism rate is 8%. We also know that pre-filing diversion also decreases racial disproportionality in our criminal justice system. When we keep black and brown kids out of the system, disproportionality in our system goes down. That's not hard math to do. So yes, I'm a big fan of diversion. I'm a big fan of partnering with the community. We can trust our community to care about the safety and well being of our community and we can trust the community to do a good job and to intervene and provide new tools to our young people.

Jim Ferrell: I'm a big believer in diversions. I think diversions are an absolute critical element of the criminal justice system to make sure that we give people a meaningful opportunity, especially the young people, to course correct when they've made a mistake. There's a role for pre-filing diversion and also pre trial diversions and it'll be on a case by case basis or generalized by which type of crimes. I'm a big fan of RCP. It needs to be fixed. In regard to just a couple of key elements. My concern that has been expressed many times is about transparency, accountability, making sure that there are steps in place to make sure that we're tracking appropriately and to make sure that we are really giving people a meaningful opportunity to course correct.There is a difference between pre filing diversion and pre trial diversion. But ultimately, the goal is the same. The goal is to get these cases dismissed, and to get these young people back in community, back living productive lives, not seeing them back into the system. Because that really is not only detrimental to them, but to the community, their families, and their long term future. Ultimately the goal is to make sure that what is asked of them is followed through, that we have metrics of success. Much of my time at the King County prosecutor's office as a city prosecutor before many of the programs that are currently in place, whether it's a drug court or whether it's, you know, a mental health court where, you know, different courts have those metrics of having checks along the way or report back and eventual dismissal. But I think RCP is here to stay. It's a matter of making sure that we have those earmarks and benchmarks of transparency, accountability, and really ultimately getting our young people back out and leading productive lives.

Jim Ferrell: In juvenile court, it's presumed that anybody that's a juvenile when they're charged with any crime goes to juvenile court. There's an automatic decline for certain crimes that are charged and they get automatically referred to adult court instead. I reread this question, probably a dozen times, in preparation for tonight. (They gave us the questions beforehand.) And a couple of things:

If someone is charged there, it's automatic. So the concern I think we're really talking about is the decision on whether to charge something that is automatic auto decline? So that's the question and so I'm not you know, I haven't have to go into it. It's been years since I've been in the felony filing unit, charging those and charging, you know, crimes. And I'd have to take a look at the numbers and see where that's at.

But disproportionality should never be tolerated. There needs to be ongoing training in regard to racial disproportionality and implicit bias, and we need to make sure that we're challenging those challenging you know, learn assumptions or or just, you know, just behaviors, you know, and we need to make sure that we get into the numbers. So, I would want to take a look at that process about how it's played out. But, we need to make sure that people are treated equally and that we also take in consideration historical bias, historical prejudice, and make sure that these kinds of things are not happening at the King County prosecutor's office.

I haven't been the Chief of Staff for the past 15 years, so if these numbers for the past 15 years have been going up that's the current administration. And when I worked there, I could tell you that I did every day I showed up to do my level best for the people, this community and in King County, and that was following the case and following the facts in the law. And charging when appropriate.

Thank you.

Leesa Manion: Okay, everyone, so if my opponent wants me to own some numbers under my leadership…

The law enforcement referrals for juvenile crime has dropped by 90%, and for violent crime that's down 70%. And I've also decreased racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system. So I will own those numbers, absolutely.

To auto-adult: it is absolutely true that the prosecuting attorney's office has discretion in what we charge. And that's why we have to be so measured and humble with our discretion because it's entirely unreviewable. There's not a judge that can say, “You know what, you made the wrong call.” There's not a police officer or community member decision on who made the wrong call. So our decisions stick.

Now with regard to auto adult, you know, there are some cases. I think of this case: there was a young person who was 17 years old. He committed a very serious, prolonged sexual and violent attack against a stranger and very nearly killed her. We auto adulthooded that case, because the amount of time as a juvenile would not have been enough for accountability. That would not have been enough for treatment and you want me to tell the truth, and some of you in this audience may not like that answer, but that is my honest answer.

I also believe that those cases should happen only in the most serious, the most horrendous, the most violence, right? There are a lot of young people that we can keep in the juvenile court system, because we know from adolescent brain science, we know from research, that young people can be rehabilitated, right? And we owe it to our young people to give them that opportunity. Now, under my leadership, I would have all cases where the young person charged is a juvenile be handled by our juvenile unit, not any adult prosecution unit, because my juvenile prosecutors understand adolescent brain development. They understand the judicial system for juveniles, they understand JR, and juvenile detention and the resources that are there or not there. And they also work closely with our dedicated juvenile judges and probation officers and our adult prosecutors just simply don't have that type of interaction. So they aren't in the same position to lend their expertise in the way that I would want.

Jim Ferrell: Well, I can tell you that as the mayor of a city of 100,000 people, the city that we're in right now, and as part of a coalition of many mayors across King County, we've had concerns about the way RCP was rolled out. A lot of it was just in regard to exactly what's going on in RCP, exactly what the program is. I think actually, what we want to make sure is that this is really about these cases that occur in our cities.

If you think about, you know, the millions of people in King County, over 2 million people, the cases that are handled in these juvenile programs occur in each and every one of these cities, and there needs to be transparency. These are public dollars. These are public cases. Some of them are serious cases. And that actually was some of my concern. I did not believe that without a case number, without a check back, without a judge, without any kind of report that will report back that it was appropriate for cases like residential burglary, bringing a gun to school. You know, felony harassment of felony assault robbery. I did not fully feel that it was appropriate to never have a case back you know, case number, check back a report, and that's what I'm talking about. So that's the discussion we were having earlier about pre filing diversion versus pretrial diversion.

There is important work that's going on, and we need to make sure that that work and community continues. But we need that transparency step because these are public dollars and public cases. And we need the rest of the public to buy into this. People support what they help create. And I think RCP can be a tremendous success for this community. But it's got to have those institutional safeguards and steps of transparency and earmarks of transparency.

Leesa Manion: This community trusts the community with our young people. I think that this community thinks that RCP keeping young people that are non violent out of the system is a success. And I think that when we talk about a check back, we can trust our community that they care about our safety. They care about our young people. They care about ensuring the success and well-being of these juveniles who are referred to RCP. They don't want final crimes, they don't want to put programs at risk. They don't want to put our neighbors or community at risk. So when again, you talk about pretrial diversion. The only way you march to trial is when you file a charge. That's called prosecution.

That's what we had in drug court for years and years and years where cases were filed and eventually dismissed. And that's the goal to get dismissed. But you have to have earmarks of transparency and accountability when it comes to serious crimes, felony crimes and public dollars. My goal is to make sure that RCP is a total success, and that's what I'll do as your prosecutor.