(Headline USA) A top prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, Meg Reiss, bragged about assisting criminals, including one convicted for murder, avoid incarceration.
Reiss, who serves as Bragg’s chief assistant district attorney, is on record defending criminals as “not bad dudes” and calling for a “restorative” justice system. This form of justice apparently involves helping criminals avoid justice altogether.
“We know incarceration doesn’t really solve any problems,” Reiss said during a Peace Institute event in May 2021, according to Fox News.
She went on to describe a case in which a man who was facing a manslaughter charge for killing another person during a violent altercation was able to get off without any prison time.
“It was an incident between two people that knew each other very well. And it was sort of… a fight that ended up with one person dying and the person who was charged had substance misuse issues and other things. And going through the outcome in the case, it just seemed appropriate for restorative practice rather than a carceral sentence,” she said.
Reiss went on to claim that she has helped refer many violent criminals away from incarceration.
“So we’re really trying to shift to restorative outcomes being the really default to the work that we do,” Reiss said. “So there’s some things where that already happens… for people that are charged with causing harm, actual violence… where they actually cause actual harm to another person.”
To accomplish this, Reiss said she “screens” cases with a leftist organization called Common Justice, which says on its website that its mission is to “develop and advance solutions to violence that … foster racial equity without relying on incarceration.”
Reiss has also advocated for critical race theory within the criminal justice system.
“One conclusion seems inescapable,” she said. “The path towards accountability… must… confront the injustices that arise from systematic racism, both past and present.”
