Preventable Crime Project

Holding progressive prosecutors and lenient judges accountable with the first systematic public database. Publishing news and changing the narrative.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

We're new, but crime is not. Those against crime have had limited success going after those who enable it, namely progressive legislators and prosecutors who support and implement soft-on-crime policies.

However, the anti-crime movement has been completely unable to deal with the judiciary. Trial court judges make life-or-death sentencing calls daily, deciding whether or not to release dangerous criminals back onto our streets with almost no public scrutiny.

We have to hold lenient, soft-on-crime judges accountable for the decisions they make and the harms they unleash on our communities.

Many receive their positions of public trust from appointments or non-partisan elections, making it quite difficult for the public to hold them accountable. Even when these judges are elected, they are elected without party affiliation, competition, or real name identification.

Politicians in areas where the problem is most acute have no incentive to rock the boat either. Many are ideologically captured or simply don't care. Something has to be done, and we're doing it.

Among other initiatives, we're creating the first Judicial Performance Database in the country to aggregate criminal justice data to name the judges who are most lenient in a publicly accessible and independently verifiable way.

Data is coming soon. Check out our website and consider donating to sponsor the project: https://t.co/IIDr65xjCE

Warmly,
The PCP Team

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

Corrupt judges make us all less safe.

The anti-crime movement must figure out how to identify and remove lenient judges. We're doing it with our Judicial Performance Database. Help fund us here:

https://t.co/msbEC3m3ab

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

Awful story. Thanks for sharing. Help us work to stop this injustice!
https://t.co/msbEC3lvkD

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. A man arrested for k*lling a Pittsburgh PA pediatrician in the middle of the night was out on NO CASH BAIL despite having a lengthy criminal history that included R*PE, s*x assault, assault, robbery and more

Now a former pretrial investigator is filing a complaint to rescind the policy

THIS IS BETRAYAL! Cashless bail needs to be repealed NATIONWIDE.

Prosecutors and judges who keep allowing this to happen should also have to face consequences for the crimes the repeat offenders commit 😡

We do not have to live like this.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

What we're figuring out.

[Cicero Institute @InstituteCicero]

63% — that’s how many Americans say a judge with a pattern of leniency toward repeat violent criminals should be removed from the bench.

Americans are done watching REPEAT criminals getting released back on our streets.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@InstituteCicero Working on this

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

The problem includes the "cut loose early part" too.

[ZitoSalena @ZitoSalena]

"The problem isn’t that a judge cut him loose early. It’s what happened after the door opened. Nothing in the public record I could find shows anyone kept watching a man a Florida judge had called a likely danger without treatment, or that anyone passed that warning to Pennsylvania.

And “adjudication withheld” matters. Pennsylvania’s online court system doesn’t show out-of-state cases at all. And on a national background check, a Florida felony case involving three counts of battery on officers can show up as something less than a conviction. Either way, a Pittsburgh arraignment could easily see a guy with a few summary offenses.

Which brings us to the question people across Allegheny County are asking, from Facebook comment threads to talk radio: How did this county come to release a man like this so easily?

Part of the answer is a decade of deliberate policy. Some of it was paid for by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation when it awarded Allegheny County a Safety and Justice Challenge grant. The initiative describes its mission as fighting “the misuse and overuse of jails.” The county’s own first-year report is blunt about what the money was for: “to reduce the population of the Allegheny County Jail by 20%.”

The county beat that goal. It reported a 36% reduction in its jail population during that first two-year grant, a stretch that included the COVID-19 shutdowns, when jails nationwide emptied out.

The MacArthur Foundation then renewed: $2 million in 2020, $1.17 million in 2022 over four years, and $334,000 in 2024. In all, $5.5 million since 2018. The county has said it was chosen for the 2021 renewal “based on the promise and progress of work to date.”

In other words, results got rewarded.

What did the money buy? The county’s reports list public defenders at overnight arraignments, hiring staff so every district judge could get a pretrial risk assessment, and faster court processing. The results were measurable. At the overnight arraignments where public defenders began appearing, district judges set money bonds 39% less often than in the same period of 2018. And the county’s pretrial office, in its own words, “never recommends money bail, which is ineffective and unfair to people who are poor.”

That recommendation creates a system built to say yes to release, one that measures success by how many beds sit empty. Keeping a man in jail requires somebody — a judge, a prosecutor, a victim — to push against that current. At Hemingway’s arraignment, by the district attorney’s own account, nobody from his office was there to push."
https://t.co/EqzcZ8i5XJ

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@ZitoSalena Huge issue. Thanks for sharing. Working on it.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

Great reporting. We're doing our part at the Preventable Crime Project to illuminate the failures of the criminal justice system and hold rogue judges accountable.

[Kelly Rae Robertson @KellyRaeReports]

They said non-monetary bail was only for non-violent offenders.

This official Allegheny County pretrial report recommended non-monetary bail on a ROBBERY.

Person charge: YES

Already on pretrial release

13 prior adult arrests

4 felony convictions

Pending burglary + terroristic threats

The tool still said non-monetary. Report by phone.

@colin_dunlap @LawEnforceToday

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@GOP412 Working hard to stop this.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@bluelivesmtr Dark stuff. Working hard to inform the public on why headlines like these happen.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@zslayback Agreed.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@KellyRaeReports Thanks for sharing. Working on this.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

Working on this.

[Kelly Rae Robertson @KellyRaeReports]

Dr. Idris Evans is dead. His wife was stabbed in their bed. Their kids, 8 and 12, ran to a neighbor in the dark.

The man charged had been arrested in July for breaking into a former partner’s home. Felony burglary. Released the next day on non-monetary bail. Zero dollars. His next court date was October 1.

I spent 14.5 years in Allegheny County Pretrial Services. I wrote the bail recommendations.

After the grant money came in, release was the mandate.

REDUCE THE JAIL POPULATION.
GET THE MONEY.
That is not one rogue magistrate. That is policy.

I have the emails. I have the letters. I have the records. I kept the evidence.

DOJ: Investigate the MacArthur, Arnold and Heinz funding and its role in Allegheny County’s pretrial system.

Washington: Audit every pretrial agency that received MacArthur jail-reduction funding. Count how many defendants were released and later charged with murder. Find out whether anyone was tracking what happened after release.

If this system is going to change, it has to be now.

Please read and share this piece.

@LEToday @DailyCaller

https://t.co/gLErJY9DRa

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

"We don't feel that he's currently amenable for release," prosecutors warned. A parole board freed convicted double murderer Darryl Collins anyway. 364 days later, he killed a third person: Fatima Johnson, tied, gagged, and left to suffocate.

We don't have to live like this.

https://t.co/qZAVcv8WDw

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

On August 24, Jose Rodriguez attacked five strangers across Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood in thirty minutes, killing 58 year old Gonsalo Lopez, a chef known for feeding the neighborhood's homeless.

Rodriguez was on probation at the time, the outcome of a January sentence that let a man with a prior stabbing conviction and six parole violations walk free instead of serving time.

His own parole agent had warned in writing he was dangerous.

America's justice system today.
https://t.co/oSHBAY9B4t

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

He carjacked and shot one stranger, then walked into a diner and shot a second in the face 11 days later. A California parole board let him out anyway. Less than a year later, Fatima Johnson was dead, and Darryl Collins was pawning her jewelry.

We have to hold the system accountable.

https://t.co/qZAVcv9ut4

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

Jose Rodriguez had a stabbing conviction, six parole violations, and a written warning from his own parole agent that he "poses a significant threat to the community."

In October 2025 he headbutted a police officer and tried to bite off his ear. A judge's answer, that January, was two years of probation.

Seven months later, Rodriguez spent thirty minutes walking through Oakland with a knife, killing a chef who fed the homeless and stabbing four more strangers before police caught him.

We need to make this unthinkable again.

https://t.co/oSHBAY93eV

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

A parole board decided a two-time murderer had "earned his freedom." 364 days later, Darryl Collins tied up, gagged, and suffocated Fatima Johnson, a mother of six who was studying for her nursing license. Then he pawned her jewelry and sold her car for drugs.

The judge who allowed this needs to be held accountable.

https://t.co/qZAVcv8WDw

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

The Preventable Crime Project runs on people who care about a justice system where consequences match the crime.

We need volunteers to help: policy research verifying enacted law against statute text, news research digging sentencing outcomes out of court records, data work on our Initiatives team, and social content turning our reporting into real posts to change the narrative on the justice system. The following are the positions we're looking to fill. Apply here: https://t.co/URZmuK3DXu

⚖️ Policy Research Volunteer
Track state and federal legislation and verify enacted policy against the actual statute or bill text, helping expand our state-by-state coverage. A strong fit if you're comfortable reading primary legislative sources and working carefully with detail.

📰 News Research Volunteer
Help identify, verify, and document sentencing outcomes and reoffense cases from public court records for our stories, articles, and press releases. A strong fit if you're comfortable digging through court records and public filings and can write clearly on a deadline.

📈 Initiatives Volunteer
Support our data-driven projects, including the Judicial Performance Database, with data entry, verification, and outreach. A strong fit if you're detail-oriented and comfortable working with structured data.

📱 Social Media Content Creator
Take our reporting and data and turn it into real video, graphics, and posts for all nine of our platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Threads, Truth Social, Rumble, and LinkedIn. A strong fit if you're already active on these platforms and can write in a clear, credible voice.

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

These are all choices. We don't have to live this way. Most Americans vastly overestimate how punitive our system is.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

🚨#BREAKING: Outrage is erupting in Charlotte NC after a Black woman who ran a RED LIGHT, hitting a 25-year-old White man out for a run, and DROVE AWAY while he DIED ON THE STREET...

...was sentenced to ONLY 30 DAYS in jail.

Yes, you read that right... THIRTY DAYS.

His name was Lance Sotelo.

Lance grew up in Dalton, Georgia, and was a cross-country MVP in high school.

He came to Queens University of Charlotte and ran cross country and track and field for SIX YEARS.

He was the student body president.

On January 14th, Lance was doing the thing he loved most, he was out for a run in Charlotte NC

At 5:47 in the evening, police say 28-year-old Q'Laundra Hood was ran a red light and she hit him, hard.

...and then she drove away.

She left him in the road and kept going.

Lance Sotelo died right there on the streets of Charlotte.
He never even made it to a hospital.

He didn't have life insurance, his family had to start a GoFundMe just to bury their son.

Hood turned herself in and pleaded guilty to felony hit-and-run and involuntary manslaughter.

And on Tuesday, a courtroom packed with Lance's family and friends watched the judge hand down the sentence.

30 days in jail. And probation.

Thirty days and $765 restitution.

WE DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS!!!!!!!

[Preventable Crime Project @prevcrimeproj]

@RogueLou18 Absolutely.