{"id":149785,"date":"2026-03-02T16:12:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T16:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/149785\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T16:12:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T16:12:31","slug":"manhattan-district-attorney-alvin-bragg-on-public-service-and-the-future-of-local-prosecution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/149785\/","title":{"rendered":"Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Public Service and the Future of Local Prosecution"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 9,\u00a0Daniel Abebe<\/a>, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, sat down with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for a wide-ranging conversation on jurisdictional issues, alternatives to incarceration, prosecutorial priorities, the importance of responding to community concerns, and the impact of public service.<\/p>\n

Held as part of the\u00a0Lawyers, Community, and Impact<\/a> (LCI) series, the event, \u201cPublic Service and the Future of Local Prosecution,\u201d began with\u00a0Benjamin L. Liebman<\/a>, Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and vice dean for intellectual life, introducing Bragg. Speaking before a packed lecture hall of students and other members of the community, Liebman cited Bragg\u2019s \u201cincredible r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of public service.\u201d Bragg was first elected Manhattan District Attorney in 2021 and was reelected in 2025. The district attorney\u2019s office currently has 1,700 employees, including 650 assistant district attorneys, and Bragg oversees \u201cone of the most high-profile prosecutorial jurisdictions in the world,\u201d said Liebman.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Alvin<\/p>\n

Alvin Bragg (left) spoke with Dean Daniel Abebe (right) during the February LCI event.<\/p>\n

Dean Abebe began the conversation with a question for Bragg about jurisdictional boundaries, particularly within the current context of immigration enforcement. Bragg said that one of his priorities as district attorney has been to enhance community trust. \u201cI\u2019m a lifelong Manhattanite, lifelong Harlemite, and come from part of the borough with a historically fraught relationship with law enforcement. And so one of my main areas of focus has been to develop trust with all the communities we serve.\u201d When local police participate with federal law enforcement on civil immigration actions, he said, \u201ceven if intellectually you distinguish between what federal law enforcement is doing and your local law enforcement, it blends, it bleeds, and that trust in government gets eroded.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bragg and Dean Abebe share a friendship that began when the two met at Harvard Law School, when Bragg was a 2L and the Dean was a 1L. They discussed their law school experiences, including clinics, courses, moot courts, and other moments that the Dean called \u201cproductive discovery.\u201d\u00a0The Dean also asked Bragg about the path that led him to \u201cthinking about law as not only a vocation but a commitment to public service.\u201d Bragg spoke about his personal experiences both growing up in New York City and with police accountability. \u201cI had three unconstitutional gunpoint stops with the NYPD, and you did not need to take Con Law to know they were unconstitutional,\u201d he said. He also described personally experiencing a number of \u201ctraditional public safety issues: a homicide victim on my doorstep, a knife to my neck, a semiautomatic weapon to my head.\u201d Bragg said he was drawn to study law by this \u201cjuxtaposition \u2026 [of] how we can achieve safety, both traditionally and then also safety from the people who are policing.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from law school in 1999, Bragg clerked for Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and worked briefly in private practice. He subsequently served as an assistant and later as chief deputy attorney general for New York state.\u00a0When he joined that office, Bragg chose to work in the public corruption unit. \u201cI felt very strongly about power asymmetry cases, as I call them,\u201d he said. At the time, he was trying to figure out if he had the temperament to be a prosecutor and send people to prison. \u201cI wanted to see if depriving someone of their liberty was something I would be comfortable doing,\u201d he said. Bragg also served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office takes on an array of cases\u2014from those involving shoplifting and violent assaults to cyber crimes and securities fraud. \u201cOur practice represents the vibrancy of Manhattan,\u201d he said. While he does routinely send people to prison, he said he is also in a position to set policy that recognizes that criminality can have different causes, which require a range of responses and a consideration of community needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic safety is always going to be [our office\u2019s] North Star, but [we] pair that with a recognition that incarceration is not always what is going to make us safe,\u201d he said. With this in mind, he established the\u00a0Pathways to Public Safety Division<\/a> during his first year as district attorney, which assesses individuals for alternatives to incarceration, including by utilizing diversion and evidence-based programming. \u201cDetermining when to use [which method] is something we think about every day, and it\u2019s hard,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bragg concluded by saying that he hoped his visit would inspire students to pursue careers in public service. \u201cWe need people in the arena, and the arena is large,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need well-trained, driven people who are going to work in the public interest, broadly construed.\u201d Besides the personal reasons of enjoying public interest work in all its forms, Bragg said that there\u2019s another \u201cgreat big reason to do it, which is that we help the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Lawyers, Community, and Impact: Launched in 2016, the series invites Columbia Law experts to talk about pressing current issues and brings deeper context and perspective to the work Columbia Law community members do both inside and outside the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On February 9,\u00a0Daniel Abebe, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, sat down with Manhattan District Attorney…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-149785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}