While waiting to testify in opposition to SB 504, a bill that would have required cash bail for all felony offenses, District Attorney of the Macon Judicial Circuit, Anita Howard, listened, along with other attendees of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee hearing, as bill sponsor, Senator Randy Robertson, likened cash bail to defendants having “skin in the game.”

“It can be ten dollars, it can be ten thousand dollars, depending on the nature of the offense, based on criminal history, based on everything,” Senator Robertson went on to say.

The perhaps indelicate nature of the Senator’s words notwithstanding, D.A. Howard grabbed a hold of the phrase later in the hearing, meeting the former Muscogee County Sheriff at his meaning.

Howard testified, “For me, there’s more value to skin in the game than [that which] equals money. I want a commitment that these individuals, who have committed non-violent felony offenses, who are coming back to our community- and they’re coming back, sooner rather than later, I want a commitment that’s not- what did he say? Ten dollars? That’s a mockery of a system that I’ve dedicated my career to. I want them to become productive members of society.”

A few weeks later, from her office in Macon, D.A. Howard continues to call the proposition of a ten-dollar bond “ludicrous.”

“To advocate for this law, and you’re already contemplating a work-around, to me, says, ‘what are you really trying to accomplish?’ I understood what they said they were trying to accomplish,” Howard offers, but citing a backlog of cases that predated the pandemic before being compounded by it, states as a matter of fact that, “People are getting bonds. So it doesn’t solve that.”

Even so, SB 504’s failings go beyond bypassing the realities of overburdened jurisdictions, such as overcrowded jails and law enforcement shortages, the latter of which D.A. Howard points out is part of larger shortages, both statewide and national. The bill, which did not pass this legislative session, according to District Attorney Howard, “not only ignores the desires of the victim. . .. it completely ignores the desires of the people who elected their district attorney, who elected their judges.”

It is D.A. Howard’s relationship with community members in her jurisdiction, to which she is native, as well as with those who have been victims of crime, the definition of which D.A. Howard seeks to expand, which is foremost in her discussion of her work.

“Typically, a victim means a name, tied to an indictment, tied to a case number. And that’s not always the big picture.” D.A. Howard recalls the first case she tried after being elected District Attorney, in which both the defendant and their murder victim had young sons of color.

“Were [the children] at the scene? Absolutely not. But they both experienced- those kids- Adverse Childhood Experiences. And we know . . . there’s a correlation between a child having those adverse experiences and the child being involved in the criminal justice system.”

D.A. Howard’s Junior Justice League, a summer program in which middle schoolers learn about how prosecutors navigate the criminal justice system, as well as her RISE initiative, which provides children and their families with targeted services based on comprehensive screenings, including trauma, are designed to directly combat ACEs, and are part of a larger overhaul of a District Attorney’s office largely focused on prevention, what the seventeen-year career prosecutor calls “the other ‘P.’”

“We have been successful with our trials. But again, what about the aftermath? We try these cases and a lot of times. . . you leave broken families… I can’t make it go away. But we can try to offer services and mentorship and support that reduces those detrimental effects.”

Along with prevention and prosecution, D.A. Howard lists restoration of public trust as essential to achieving public safety, her “number one priority.”

“[A district attorney’s] first job,” says D.A. Howard, who is also a criminal justice adjunct professor at Middle Georgia State University, is to inform our community.” For Howard, that means being “intentionally accessible,” and taking a measured approach to larger ideals of decriminalizing race and poverty, by focusing on what is within her control.

From her office’s public safety campaign against co-sleeping, to eradicate preventable child death, to training her rescue dog, Lamar, as an emotional support animal for victims and justice workers alike, D.A. Howard is solutions-oriented.

One idea she recently implemented- extending her victims services staff to her grand jurors- originated from another district attorney in the Urban District Attorneys Coalition, a recently formed group of D.A.s from larger jurisdictions, who share similar challenges, such as a higher magnitude of violent crime.   

Changes to the D.A.’s role, and reforms to the criminal justice system at large, advocated for by D.A. Howard and other like-minded district attorneys in the coalition, arise as much from a practical need to combat such levels of violence, as they do from altruism.

In the case of SB504, D.A. Howard’s testimony was inspired by a commitment to both. While she opposed the bill from an obligation to “what humanity requires,” and believes that “people should not be summed up by how much money they do or don’t have,” she contends that the sheer amount of violent crime overwhelming the system would have made the bill impossible to enact.  

In the upcoming legislative session, D.A. Howard, along with the Urban District Attorney’s coalition, plans to lobby for legislation of their own.  

“Anyone who thinks, if you’re tougher on crime, you’re going to have a safer community- that’s just not reality. I don’t believe you should be tough on crime, I don’t believe you should be soft on crime, I think you should be smart about crime.”

Ultimately when it comes to being a stakeholder in public safety, it’s everyone’s skin in the game.