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Five Questions with Ed Chung

Expert on crime in America

Joyce Vance Oct 4 ∙ Preview

As crazy as it may seem with a felon running as their candidate to be president, Republicans, including the felon himself, spend a lot of time talking about how Democrats have unleashed a crime wave on the country. But it’s not true. While Republicans have billed themselves as the party that is tough on crime for decades, Democrats have been smart on crime. Here we are, heading into an election that offers us the choice between the prosecutor and the criminal.

It’s good to have facts and statistics at your fingertips when you’re having conversations on this topic. Republicans claim that if Kamala Harris wins the presidency, crime will be out of control. I have just the person for us to talk with about crime in America. For eight years as a U.S. Attorney in the Obama Administration, I co-chaired a subcommittee of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee that focused on the criminal practice, including strategies for crime prevention and rehabilitation for offenders. One of my favorite colleagues is tonight’s guest, Ed Chung, who has just the right expertise to get us up to speed.

Ed Chung is the vice president of initiatives at the Vera Institute and a member of Vera’s leadership team. Vera’s mission is to end the overcriminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty. Ed has two decades of legal and policy-making experience, including positions in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Prior to joining Vera, he was the vice president of Criminal Justice Reform at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on shrinking the footprint of U.S. criminal justice systems. As a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice, he worked on some of the Obama Administration’s signature priorities including the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, the Task Force on 21^st Century Policing, and ending the criminalization of poverty. Chung started his career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, then as a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. He brings a prosecutor’s perspective to crime reduction.

Our conversation tonight is a vital and important one for anyone who is seeking to understand these issues, not just the political dialogue being purposed in an election year to drive support to candidates. For those of you who want more, I strongly recommend a podcast project Ed was involved with, Vera Institute’s “The 30 Year Project.” It’s a four-episode series that examines the 1994 Crime Bill on its 30-year anniversary and considers the movement to end mass incarceration over the past three decades. The podcast dropped last month, so you can listen to all of the episodes at once. It’s an incredibly important series at a time when Donald Trump’s calls for imposing a death penalty for “drug dealers” is being unleashed. People need to hear the truth, not the political rhetoric, on this incredibly important topic.

Five Questions is the only part of Civil Discourse that is limited to paid subscribers. The rest of the newsletters are available to free subscribers as well. This feature is my way of thanking those who are able to support my work financially, which lets me devote more time and resources to it. I’m appreciative of everyone who is here at Civil Discourse.