Criminal Justice Took a Wrong Turn — Accountability Must Bring It Back
America cannot fix its criminal justice system by defending failed policies, tolerating ineffective leadership, or ignoring constitutional rights.
For more than a decade, criminal justice reform has been sold as a way to make the system fairer, more efficient, and safer. Bail reform, diversion programs, alternatives to incarceration, reduced enforcement, and new prosecution policies spread across the country. Enough time has now passed to stop debating intentions and examine outcomes. Did these changes make communities safer? Did defendants become more accountable? Did courts function better? Did victims benefit? And did taxpayers receive what they were promised?
A recent New York Post opinion article examining Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program provides an important example. LEAD became a nationally promoted model for diverting offenders away from traditional arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. Supporters cited impressive results involving arrests, employment, housing, and recidivism. Those claims helped the program gain national credibility. Now, a Washington Policy Center analysis is challenging whether some of those claims accurately reflected the underlying data. That matters because Seattle was not operating in isolation. Programs and policies built around the same philosophy were carried into communities across America.
Bail reform deserves the same examination. The public discussion concentrated heavily on reducing detention and eliminating financial conditions of release, but the consequences after release received far less attention. Did defendants appear in court? How many were rearrested? How many became repeat offenders while cases were pending? How many warrants remained outstanding? What happened to the victims of crimes committed during pretrial release? Those are not political questions. They are measurements of whether a criminal justice policy is doing its job.
National crime statistics alone cannot answer them. FBI data show that violent crime declined substantially nationwide in 2025, and that is good news. But national averages cannot tell us whether an individual city, county, court system, prosecutor’s office, or pretrial program is functioning properly. Criminal justice is experienced locally. A community needs to know what is happening inside its own system and whether the people responsible for operating it are producing acceptable results.
At the same time, law enforcement has lost a tremendous amount of experience. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2026 that resignations and retirements increased from 2019 through 2024 and contributed to staffing reductions. Replacing an experienced officer, investigator, supervisor, or administrator is not simply a matter of filling a vacancy. Institutional knowledge, judgment, training, relationships, and years of practical experience leave with that person. Agencies cannot continually lose qualified people without eventually paying a price in performance.
That makes leadership especially important. A title, seniority, political connection, or approaching retirement date cannot become protection from performance standards. Police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, corrections administrators, court officials, supervisors, and other public employees hold positions of responsibility because communities need those jobs performed well. When someone can no longer meet that standard, staffing changes may be necessary. Government positions exist to serve the public, not merely to provide someone a place to remain until retirement.
The judiciary must also remain within its proper constitutional role. Judicial independence is essential, and courts have an obligation to protect constitutional rights. But judges are not legislatures. When courts move beyond interpreting law and begin effectively creating criminal justice policy from the bench, decisions that ordinarily belong in the legislative process can be imposed without the same public debate, political accountability, or opportunity for citizens to influence their elected representatives. Respect for the judiciary does not require pretending those boundaries do not matter.
There is another concern developing alongside all of this. Civil rights are increasingly being tested in the name of public safety. Automated license-plate readers, facial recognition, electronic monitoring, interconnected databases, surveillance networks, and mass information sharing can provide legitimate investigative benefits. They can also place enormous power in government hands. Supporting public safety does not mean surrendering constitutional protections against unreasonable government intrusion. If we demand that defendants follow the law, we should demand exactly the same from the government enforcing it.
This is why the problems facing criminal justice cannot be reduced to one issue. Bail, policing, prosecution, courts, corrections, staffing, technology, constitutional rights, and political leadership interact with one another. A failure at one level moves quickly into the next. We are dealing with a system-wide problem that has to be examined from the ground up.
The coming election cycle gives citizens an opportunity to conduct that examination. Candidates for sheriff, district attorney, judge, legislature, mayor, county government, and other positions affecting criminal justice should be required to explain what they believe and what evidence supports their positions. Incumbents should have to defend their records with results. Voters should ask about repeat offenders, failures to appear, outstanding warrants, law-enforcement staffing, diversion outcomes, prosecution policies, surveillance practices, constitutional protections, program costs, and public safety.
This should not be complicated.
If a policy works, demonstrate it.
If it fails, replace it.
If an agency lacks qualified personnel, rebuild it.
If leadership cannot meet the needs of the community, change the leadership.
And if government crosses constitutional boundaries in the name of public safety, stop it.
America does not need another decade of criminal justice policy driven by slogans, ideology, selective statistics, or fear of admitting that something did not work. It needs a system measured by performance: safe communities, functioning courts, accountable defendants, protected victims, constitutional government, qualified personnel, and competent leadership.
The New York Post article is not simply a story about one program in Seattle. It is another reason for Americans to examine what has happened across the country and demand proof that the criminal justice system we have built is actually better than the one reformers insisted had to be replaced.
Ari Hoffman
About the Author
Mike Morrison is the 2026 PBUS National Bail Agent of the Year, President of the Mississippi Bail Agents Association, and a nationally recognized bail educator, speaker, and criminal justice commentator. With more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a licensed Professional Bail Agent and owner of Mike Morrison Bail Bonding Company in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he brings a practical, real-world perspective to discussions involving bail, criminal justice, constitutional rights, public safety, government accountability, technology, and public policy.
Morrison is recognized as a bail trainer by the Mississippi Judicial College and has been invited to present before judges, justice court clerks, prosecutors, bail professionals, and other criminal justice stakeholders, including as a guest speaker for the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office. He also leads professional education and ethics programs for bail agents across the country through the Master Class Bail Agent Series and other national training initiatives.
He has published nearly 200 articles examining the institutions, policies, and decisions that affect working Americans. His writing is grounded in decades spent inside courtrooms, jails, communities, and the criminal justice system, and his commentary has reached more than one million views across social media in 2026.
Independent, plain-spoken, and focused on accountability, Morrison writes and speaks about the intersection of government, liberty, public safety, professional responsibility, and the real-world consequences of public policy in Mississippi and across the nation.
© 2026 Mike Morrison. All rights reserved.
