Candidate column: John Zimmerman

This election for Johnson County Attorney offers contrasting visions for the local criminal justice system and the role of the county attorney's office in leading that system.

The status quo is driven by the priorities of overaggressive local police departments, who focus on excessive searches of African-American people and making lots of arrests for victimless crimes rather than on true public safety issues. Those old-fashioned police practices are then rubber stamped by a county attorney's office that could, but does not, exercise its proper role of screening all cases through the values of local citizens.

The result is a Johnson County criminal justice system notorious for unnecessarily derailing the lives of local citizens - especially people of color and the poor. For example, black people are eight times more likely than whites to be charged for marijuana in Johnson County, despite surveys showing that black and white people smoke pot at similar rates. Despite 5 percent of the county population being black, more than 40 percent of people in the overcrowded jail are black. And of the people in jail, more than 75 percent have not been convicted but are simply too poor to post the bond money that would allow them to be out before trial.

These injustices unnecessarily divide Johnson County between the haves and the have-nots, and between white people and people of color. They are the result of decisions by the current county attorney's office to see themselves as working for the police and the well-off rather than for all the citizens in the county equally.

The current county attorney likes to talk about her experience and her small programs that benefit a tiny percentage of defendants. But one should not lose sight of that fact that as a two-term incumbent, it is her experience and programs that have brought us the current system with all its damning statistics.

I'm 46, had a previous career as a Mennonite pastor, have a son in college, and became a lawyer to fight for equal criminal justice for the poor. I'm offering an alternative vision in which social justice values rather than the police guide prosecution decisions.

Police can be great as first responders. But equal valuing of all people should guide what happens to those arrested.

' John Zimmerman of Iowa City is a Democratic candidate for Johnson County attorney. Comments: john-zimmerman@live.com