I have now watched the Fulton district attorney forum. A summary (thread):

All the candidates talked up measures to decrease the jail population. Paul Howard, the incumbent, pointed to his memo asking police chiefs to instruct officers to merely cite felony property offenses. https://twitter.com/elium2/status/1263604950904553473

Indeed, bookings into the Fulton jail are way down. This is a good example, by the way, of Howard using his office as a bully pulpit – and so was his successful push last year to require magistrates' bond decisions to be reviewed by Superior Court judges in some cases.

Which is to say that Howard has used his soft power to make it easier to lock people up as recently as last year.

Christian Wise Smith emphasized that he would never request cash bail, pointing to San Francisco and DC's models as alternatives. (Those are two different models!)

Fani Willis criticized Howard for overcharging, leading to people sitting in jail for months only to have their cases dismissed once they finally go before a judge.

Willis specifies that she does not believe “drug paraphernalia crimes” should be prosecuted (she did not clearly commit not to prosecute in such cases).

Howard seemed at one point to blame deinstitutionalization for the rise in jailing of mentally ill people, then touted the county's “accountability court” focused on mental health as a way defendants with mental illnesses are kept out of jail.

Howard also defended his prosecutions by saying almost all inmates are indicted, invoking grand juries (who, of course, rarely hear arguments from anyone outside the prosecutor's office) as a check.

Wise Smith referred to a 2011 Seattle program using deferral for “quality of life charges” such as drug possession and “prostitution” as having “over 500 success stories”.

All of them said it's important to have community partners to provide people who are mentally ill, poor, and/or homeless with resources.

The discussion then moved to the prosecutions over the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal. Wise Smith says that Howard and Willis abused their discretion by pursuing RICO charges in that scandal, and that accountability could have been obtained through e.g. diversion.

Willis said that RICO is used primarily against corporations and that APS is a corporation. But I'm pretty sure those are two different meanings of the word “corporation”.

Willis also expressed indignation at how the scandal “put a smudge on the black middle class” and said that they only prosecuted “higher-ups”, offering diversion to hundreds of teachers implicated.

Howard said “I would not do anything differently” if he could go back and do it again, and took partial credit for the drop from 256,000 answers changed from wrong to right to, under state supervision, less than 100.

Howard taking credit for that change seems like a huge stretch to me.

On RICO, his argument was that such charges are for corrupt enterprises generally.

The next topic was cash bail, specifically whether by holding people in jail for months under cash bail, the Fulton DA's office coerces them to take pleas, thus depriving them of their right to a trial.

Willis said that this goes back to the need to properly evaluate cases after police have made a probable cause determination / before indictment.

Willis said that, with several large exceptions, “I believe that people should have a bond, and maybe that's the defense attorney in me.” I think she meant she feels people outside of those exceptions have the right to be released, but she wasn't clear how she'd achieve that.

Willis also did not specify a policy for those exceptions (cash bail? no releases at all?).

Howard bragged that he has invited people from community groups, including the person who wrote this question, to participate in release evaluations. He went on to dispute the claim that his office engages in the practices described by the question.

Howard said that lots of defendants are “repeat offenders” and attacked Fulton judges as “legion and famous for giving the smallest” release criteria and bonds to such offenders, saying they have been “greatly assailed by the public for letting people out, not keeping people in.”

Howard asserted that the problem is not the jail but “the system”, because Fulton is not following “best practices” such as “case processing standards”. Again, Howard is the incumbent district attorney. He also said signature bonds are in use but did not specify how often.

Wise Smith emphasized that people can lose their jobs and houses when kept in jail. He said that he is the only candidate to clearly say “I will never recommend a cash bond once elected”. Unlike Howard, he said that the premise of the question was accurate.

Wise Smith also pointed out that he hasn't “taken a single donation dollar from anybody in the cash bond industry” and committed to never do so. (That commitment distinguishes him from the other two, but the bond industry has not gotten involved in this race to my knowledge.)

Jumping back to opening statements because they provide important context for the closing statements.

Fani Willis said that the way things are in Fulton now doesn't work for people charged with crimes or for the victims of crimes, and that people don't feel safe.

Paul Howard said he was inspired to be a prosecutor at the age of 42, when he saw “the humiliation of two African-American men in a South Georgia courtroom”, and that his motive was to make sure that never happened under him.

Howard took credit for the drop in violent crime since his 1996 election, even though that was a national (and international!) trend.

Howard said his goal is to keep making the county safer, to “prosecute the most violent and the most harmful criminals”, while continuing “crime prevention” programs for children and giving “deserving” defendants second chances.

Howard listed three focuses:
1. “violent gang activity”, which he says accounts for 36% of our violent crime;
2. the “juvenile repeat offender” rate, which he cited as 58%;
3. the “crime prevention programs and programs that provide second chances for people who deserve them”.

Christian Wise Smith distinguished himself as “a product of the justice system”: his mother was often arrested and eventually lost custody of him; he watched police strip his grandmother during an arrest; his uncle is in prison for murder.

A close friend of Wise Smith's was shot in the street at 17, and he has “several other relatives and friends who have served time”. He personally was expelled from school and feared he was “destined to become a drug dealer.”

Wise Smith argued that “overcoming all of that real life experience to be here now far outweighs any professional experience that my opponents have simply because they are older than me”.

Wise Smith tied his opponents to “a negative history” and said he wants to “value people over convictions” and not criminalize “black and brown skin, poverty, mental health/disabilities, nor substance addiction.” Says he'd focus on “treatment and services instead of sentences.”

Wise Smith committed not to “abuse prosecutorial discretion”, criticizing Howard and Willis for the APS cheating prosecutions, and said he'd focus on “violent and serious crimes” and “work to get answers efficiently” for police shootings instead of criminalizing homelessness.

Wise Smith also said he'd partner with public schools to break the school-to-prison pipeline and use his discretion to “help kids be kids”, end the cash bail system, and “right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs, *starting* with no longer prosecuting marijuana.”

On police shootings, Wise Smith specifically referred to the death of Jimmy Atchison.

Okay, that's the opening statements. As for closing statements…

Wise Smith said he is “the most progressive candidate in this race […] for several reasons.” He said his personal experience being victimized by the criminal justice system distinguishes him from the other candidates and from the vast majority of DAs.

Wise Smith also said he's not just giving politically safe answers and invoked his refrain of “people over conviction rates”.

Howard largely repeated his opening arguments: a “record of service to the Fulton County community” and the three previously articulated focuses. He added that 40 judges and 3 DAs in the metro area have previous legal experience working under him.

Howard also invoked COVID-19 and a lack of leadership (he did not refer to Trump or Kemp explicitly, but it was heavily implied to be one of them) and said “that’s what I bring: experienced leadership.”

Willis said she was the “only one that [will] bring integrity back” and said there's a risk that, if reelected, Howard might be removed from office due to ethics issues (she didn't elaborate, but I assume she means the ones currently in the news).

Willis then responded to Wise Smith's argument that his personal experience with the criminal justice system is a qualification by saying that, while she has also e.g. had a family member charged with murder, “that’s not what makes me qualified.”

Willis argued that instead, she's qualified because she has experience as a prosecutor, as a defense attorney for people “charged with serious crimes”, and as someone who's challenged the police over civil forfeitures in court and won.

Willis then made a third argument, saying Howard lacks “compassion”, leading to high turnover in the office as well as overprosecution. She concluded: ”Please don’t waste your vote”, instead, “vote for the only qualified candidate with integrity.”

I will tweet out a much shorter set of takeaways later, probably as a reply to the tweet I quoted at the top of this thread.

Based on what I saw, I definitely have some criticisms of all the candidates, including Wise Smith, who I am voting for.

(I don't know if those criticisms will make it into the takeaways though.)

One other thing I should have mentioned that is in my notes is that Howard took credit for reducing the jail's population from 4,800 to 2,400 (this was right before the comments seemingly about deinstitutionalization).

This isn't in my notes, but I am pretty sure Howard said that ideally the county jail would only have 1,000 people in it.