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Kenneth Polite

Kenneth Polite

Lawyer and former United States Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division

Sep 9, 2026

12:33
... environment better?
12:34
Yeah, I, I, I think this is an important issue, Jeff, and I, I can't...
12:38
I'm not in the Department of Justice now, so I can't, I can't necessarily speak, um, to, to how they frame this, this particular issue of how we communicate the, the work of US attorneys offices or communicate the work of, of AUSAs and US attorneys.
12:55
But I, I'll talk, uh, about the way that, you know, when I was becoming a US attorney and speaking with leadership like, you know, Eric Holder was the at- was the, the, the, the attorney general at the time, and he would always frame this as, "You are not merely prosecutors, you are community problem solvers." Right? The notion being that appreciating the, the power and authority that comes with investigating, prosecuting, sentencing, you know, leading to greater deterrence, you know, taking, taking bad actors off of the street and, and limiting their ability to replicate their criminality, all of those are important priorities for these offices.
13:39
At the same time, that, that is not the only way for us to achieve safety in our communities, right? And so if you know that, for example, your educational system, uh, is struggling with issues of truancy and that may be leading to, uh, to greater youth violence in your communities or it's a, it's a s- it's a symptom of, of greater youth violence in your community, perhaps instead of just prosecuting your way towards addressing that issue, you, you partner with educators, you partner with, with, with other support net- uh, systems within that community to help change the trajectory of those young people in a different way, away from criminality, away from truancy, and towards a more positive outcome.
14:26
If you are seeing, um, uh, other issues related to your healthcare system, for example, and how that might be affecting safety in your community, issues of transportation, issues of, of food, food security, of, uh, issues of housing, all of these are issues that in the, in the, the, the immediate kind of stereotypical fashioning of what a prosecutor, quote unquote, "can do" or a US attorney can do is clearly outside the scope.
14:58
You know, you're not pros- that's not about prosecuting cases.

17 MINS LATER

31:42
What is the path forward here with, with AI as a tool that you want people to be able to use, but also it's important that they not make mistakes?

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