Incumbent District Attorney Scott Colom has heard all the arguments about how he has been “soft on crime” the last eight years.

He thinks they’re ludicrous.

Colom, a Democrat, has heard his opponent, Jase Dalrymple, vow he would perform more effectively prosecuting cases the right way.

To that, he notes a simple record: 3-0.

“I’ve tried three cases against him and won all three times,” Colom said of his opponent, who is a public defender. “If I’m not good and you’re so much better, (but) I beat you every time.”

But that’s not the only record he’s running on.

Colom’s office touts an 85% conviction rate. In the 26 cases he has tried before a jury himself, he’s won 24. Of the office’s convictions, the 55 appealed were upheld.

He’s expanded pre-trial diversion and victims’ advocacy programs. More importantly, he said, he has focused on transparency — something he plans to “take to the next level” if reelected, by making dismissals, no-bills by grand juries and sentencing recommendations more accessible to the public.

“It’s very easy when you’re leading the criminal justice system to want to hide things,” he said. “So often (with) bad news, even if you can explain it, the easiest thing to do is cover it up. … I have nothing to hide. Every case that I’ve dismissed … every case that I’ve plead, I can give you an explanation for it.”

Rising crime?
The narrative that violent crime is statistically rising is flawed, Colom said, though he acknowledges public perception can drive that.

“People always want to look for simple causes for crime,” he said. “The reality is they are very complicated and complex. In 2020 and 21, crime went up across the country. Some people, even now, will try to blame me for that (locally). Well, I was DA for four years before that, so do I get any credit for when it was down?”

Equally flawed is the narrative that leaning on harsh sentences equals making places safer, noting Mississippi has the highest incarceration rate in the country.

“If sending people to prison was all you needed to do to keep the community safe, we’d be the safest place in the world,” he said. “The reality is it is more complicated than that.”

Dalrymple, in particular, has pointed to Colom’s plea deals and his record with grand juries as worsening the violent crime problem.

“Every plea deal I make has to be approved by (a circuit court judge),” he said. “None of those judges are going to allow me to make pleas deals regularly … that aren’t in line with keeping the community safe.”

“… I don’t see how you can be tougher on violent crime than me, unless you’re going to just go to trial on every single case. … The reality is every time you go to trial, everything else (on the docket) gets continued. So if you’re going to say, ‘I want 15 years on every crime,’ then what is that (defendant) going to say? ‘I might as well go to trial.’ … Then everything keeps getting pushed back, … and the docket (backlog) gets worse.”

As for grand juries, he said he presents the full slate of evidence each time.

But Colom pointed back to Dalrymple’s own record, noting his only prosecutorial experience was an internship with Colom’s office while in college.

The ‘Forrest’ spectrum
As Dalrymple says he’s going to fall between Colom and his predecessor Forrest Allgood on the spectrum of “being a tough prosecutor,” Colom said that language is dangerous.

“If you had a doctor who had a 95% success rate treating cancer, and you had another doctor who never treated anybody who’s saying, ‘Well, (the first doctor) is only treating the cases of the patients he can save.’ That’s a ludicrous argument,” he said. “… What he’s accusing me of is trying cases against guilty people. What does he want me to do? Try cases against people who might be innocent, where it’s 50/50? To see if I can get them? I’m not going to do that … and I take that as a badge of honor.”

Still, he understands the pressure of getting results in cases.

“When crime happens, especially something violent, people want answers,” Colom said. “The police are under a tremendous amount of pressure. I can see now how innocent people get convicted. … Police put a lot of pressure on themselves to solve that crime, and that desperation can cause people to blur lines. Then as the prosecutor, Do I want to be the one to tell this victim that we don’t have enough evidence? I’ve had to do that.

“It’s almost easier to say, ‘Listen, I’m just going to roll the dice, and at least if it goes bad with the jury I can say it was the jury.’ Then ‘Oh, I got a conviction. But what if this person is innocent?’ … It takes a lot of courage to do what’s right.”

Helping addicts
Minimizing the drug trade means attacking the demand as much as the supply. If someone wants drugs, someone will always be around to sell them, he said. But how can you get fewer people to want them?

“I try to help addicts. … If you isolate them and make them feel guilty about it, they’re just going to go back into that world,” he said.

“You’ve got to love on them. All the research shows if you want to do something about addiction … you have to show them there is always hope they can change.”

With “serious addictions,” he supports putting them back in drug court even on a second offense with more intense treatment and longer monitoring.

The “last strike” after that is prison, and violent crimes aren’t tolerated at all.

“If you harm somebody else, I can’t focus as much on your addiction,” Colom said.

Victims not cooperating
While high turnover in police departments is making building cases harder, Colom said, the “biggest problem in law enforcement” is victims and witnesses failing to cooperate with police.

Whether it’s “not wanting to be a snitch” or a thirst for retaliation, it’s something he encounters constantly.

“We’ve got to build trust in the system again,” he said. “… We have young people who would rather handle it themselves … which only causes a further cycle.”

Working with youth
If reelected, Colom wants to get out in the community an create a “violence prevention ecosystem.”

That will take him away from the courtroom more often and partner him more with schools, youth programs and youth courts.

“The older they get, the more it’s up to them to rehabilitate,” Colom said. “The prison system (is) not even trying to rehabilitate people. They’re sitting them in prison. They’re storing them. There’s a lot of violence, drugs and guns there. … It’s not the MDOC’s fault. They don’t have the resources to do it.

“By the time they get to that system, it’s pretty much up to them. We need to work downstream to get the young people who are actually more likely to change.”

Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.