Albany Voters Reject District Attorney David Soares’ Fearmongering and Hyper-carceral Agenda

The Briefing

Albany community members sent a strong message to politicians and prosecutors in New York and across the country: Stop fearmongering and lying about bail reform, pretrial freedom, and other justice issues and start supporting solutions, or we’ll oust you. 

In June 2024, Albany voters ousted five-term District Attorney David Soares by a 10% margin after his repeated lies about bail reform and other criminal justice reforms that have proven over years to work. Soares had long aligned himself with conservative lawmakers and law enforcement unions as he advocated for hyper-carceral policies, but Albany voters saw through Soares’ misinformation and fearmongering. The Albany DA race sends a clear message to politicians and prosecutors: New Yorkers know that bail reform makes our communities safer, and fearmongering around bail reform is a losing political strategy. 

Soares’ lies about bail reform and Raise the Age laws prove politically costly

Soares initially ran for district attorney in 2004 as a progressive Working Families Party candidate who promised to combat the War on Drugs and promote alternatives to incarceration. But over the course of his two-decade tenure, Soares changed tune and realigned himself with conservative interests and police unions. In fact, over the last several years, Soares emerged as the leading opponent of the immensely successful criminal justice reforms passed in New York state, including bail reform and discovery reform. 

Soares knew well that research shows how successful pretrial freedom has proven to be: hundreds of thousands free who otherwise would be subjected to unnecessary pretrial detention, hundreds of millions taxpayer dollars saved, and no negative impact on public health and safety. Instead of differentiating himself on the issues from his bad-faith Republican counterparts, Soares used his platform as district attorney to condemn bail reform in official public statements, in local editorial pages, and, most recently, on the campaign trail. Ignoring the numerous studies proving that bail reform has not caused an increase of crime in New York (or even across the country in places like Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago), Soares repeatedly cherry-picked statistics and falsely scapegoated bail reform for unrelated instances of crime in order to make his point.

Soares’ public lies about criminal justice reform also served as fodder for Republican lawmakers seeking to challenge New York’s Raise the Age laws, who cited him in their testimony. Soares linked unsolved criminal cases without evidence to the Raise the Age law—a modest reform passed in 2017 that raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18 and ended New York’s draconian practice of sentencing some children as adults. Without any evidence, Soares described Raise the Age laws as a source of “incessant violence” and even sought to change the law, ignoring research on adolescent brain development and youth sentencing guidelines in almost every other state. Though Soares advocated for children’s “removal from the community” as an alternative to Raise the Age, Albany voters know that youth incarceration is detrimental to public safety because it tears apart communities and destabilizes young people’s lives.

Soares had multiple opportunities to scale back his fearmongering rhetoric, but he continuously advocated for increased pretrial incarceration. Soares’ hyper-carceral and uninformed stance on criminal justice issues put him increasingly out of touch with the people of Albany. 

Media wrongfully positioned Soares as a public safety expert

During his campaign, Soares not only received endorsements from several law enforcement unions, and the Democratic County Sheriff Craig Apple, but also the sensationalist and conservative New York Post. The Post has consistently lied about bail reform in order to promote a racist, carceral agenda devoted to disproportionately caging putting Black and brown people behind bars. Beyond their endorsement, the Post repeatedly gave Soares a platform to spread his lies about criminal justice reform by repeatedly publishing his misleading condemnations of bail reform as fact and wrongfully promoted him as a public safety “expert.” 

Voters want research-backed public safety solutions, not mass incarceration

Soares’ increasing embrace of conservative crime policies is part of a larger national trend of Democrats seeking to win elections by presenting themselves as “tough on crime,”' even when doing so involves abandoning criminal justice reform measures that have been shown time and again to improve public safety.

But voters do not want needless incarceration. According to national public opinion polls, the majority of Americans—even those who are most concerned about crime—support decarceration measures, police accountability, and alternatives to incarceration. Lee Kindlon, Soares’ challenger, understood that bail reform is not “the danger that Soares wants to turn it into,” and so did Albany voters. The Albany DA election proves that the people of New York want comprehensive, research-backed public safety solutions, not draconian crime policies rooted in sensationalist and fearmongering media headlines. In spite of Soares’ institutional advantage as an incumbent, Albany voters saw through his fearmongering and recognized the ongoing success of bail reform: rearrest rates in New York City have not changed since bail reform was passed and court appearance rates have actually improved. Candidates can win elections when they stand behind the data and recognize this truth.