Our first two years, at the height of the pandemic, we were hit with a very intense nationwide violent crime spike. So we absolutely had to prioritize violent crime and victim crime, and in particular, a tremendous homicide backlog that we discovered when we got there. And we are seeing now that every violent crime marker is down. So now, it’s incumbent upon me to be happy for like half a second that we’re seeing some good results. But criminal justice flies at the speed of light and you have to be data driven and solution oriented. I am optimistic that we can use the skills we learned and the relationships we built to address the very serious challenges of the day, which is open-air homelessness, fentanyl and the conditions of our neighborhoods.

The biggest issue is leadership at the county attorney’s office. We hired a defense attorney who’s never done a trial, who’s never prosecuted a case, who’s never held a victim’s hand, never collaborated with law enforcement. And now we have a three-and-a-half-year report card. How you fix it, is you hire an experienced prosecutor who’s done this for 17 years, not just at the local level, but state, federal and international levels. We need someone new who will create a whole new culture in the office.

If a file opens in our office — meaning that a criminal case has been referred to the county attorney — the harm has already occurred. That has been the traditional role of a prosecutorial office. But if we want to actually make a significant dent in the crime rate, we have to be accessible to the community and get out there to do prevention work. For example, we handed out 18,463 gun locks in our free time and we became a recognized and certified Narcan distributor. On the back end, we have to focus on reentry. We know that the vast majority of people who end up in prison are coming right back home into our neighborhoods. You either have an attitude of making life as hard for them as possible, or you have a much smarter, and more humane, attitude of wanting to assist them in being as absolutely successful and stable as possible.

That’s a community effort. You have to have a bunch of different agencies collaborating with each other to do that. As prosecutors, we’re reactive to a lot of these things. So how we treat individuals, defendants and victims, is what we get evaluated on. Hopefully, you treat a defendant properly, so they don’t commit another crime. Our hope is that we have a community with quality education and have funding and resources to address food deserts and homelessness and abuse. All those things contribute to crime. As a prosecutor, I like to have a seat at the table. That’s all I can do.

We have taken a two-pronged approach. Where we have people suffering from substance use disorders and mental illness, we have done everything possible to move them out of the criminal justice system and into treatment. We’ve been able to do that by the thousands. On the other hand, we have taken a very serious approach in a handful of cases where the evidence is really clear that fentanyl dealers know they are harming people and engage in the risk anyway. We think that recklessness corresponds to manslaughter.

There are three silos. We have traffickers, who are dealing with poison and profiting from this poison. They need to be prosecuted. We also have people who are on drugs who commit a crime. I need to hold them accountable for the crime, especially if there’s a victim involved. There has to be some restitution here. Then we have our third silo, which are people who are just addicted and who are just caught with substances on them. Let’s get them treatment. Let’s get them out of the criminal system and connect them with mental health resources so they can get the treatment they need.

You can have all of the diversion courts and drug courts and specialty courts in the world. But if you are still disqualifying people, who need treatment now, because of prior convictions, you are intentionally or unintentionally perpetuating the cycles that came before you. So because we know that certain neighborhoods here and across the nation are over surveilled, over arrested, over charged and over incarcerated, you have to change the policies that are perpetuating that. We did that across the board with every single specialty court and diversion option that we have. Everything must be data driven and solutions oriented and constantly under check and review. Tough on crime policies can make you feel better temporarily, but they are the most expensive and least successful.

I think the number one thing is that a lot of non-violent, non-dangerous crimes should be automatic diversion. Take the prosecutor away from it. When you start getting prosecutors involved, that’s when implicit bias starts to occur. These are things that are embedded in our society. But when you send non-violent offenders through diversion, they are given a chance to prove themselves. And some of these communities have been overpoliced. Many minority communities are also unfortunately the victims of a lot of crime. These are things that I really want to hone in on and try to do our best by everyone that comes through our justice system, and diversion will be a big part of that.

When I filed for office in 2019, I definitely did not foresee that this would become a hallmark of my term in office. When people are voting, it should now be top of mind who your county attorney is, not because prosecutors should be deciding health decisions for people but because we’ve been forced into this ridiculous, bizarre and absurd role. The community knows where I stand and how strong I’ve been on the issue and I will continue to stand firm on it.

Editor’s note: To help voters better understand where Conover stands on this issue Arizona Luminaria looked at her public statements/actions: She defended Planned Parenthood of Arizona in court in 2022 when the previous state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, filed a suit to enforce an 1864 law that bans abortion. “As we have said since the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn the Constitutional protections provided by Roe, this Office does not intend to spend precious time or resources on the prosecution of those who are put in this impossible position, or medical providers,” she stated following the April 2024 Arizona Supreme Court ruling upholding the Civil-War era abortion ban.

I will never prosecute a woman for having an abortion, or a provider or the husband or the Uber driver or anyone involved in the chain. That’s a constitutional violation of privacy. Having the government dictate what you do with your body is offensive. So, you’re never gonna get that from me. And we have to advocate for that across the state, not just in Pima County.

I think it’s appalling. To be clear, when there is evidence that people are committing harm, we have always and we will always hold people to account. But that’s not what this decision says. This decision says that even where we don’t have services and bed space to offer because we’re maxed out, we can somehow decide that that person sleeping is deliberately committing a criminal act of trespass. This is where your leader in office needs to reflect the core values of the community, but also stand up strongly when the most powerful players in the world try to tell us who we are and try to tell us to dehumanize our own neighbors.

We need to ratchet down the conversation around this issue. Do I disagree with the decision? Yes, wholeheartedly. But all the Supreme Court does is interpret the law. They don’t make the law and they don’t enforce the law. We live in Pima County. We dictate what goes on here and we need to rest assured that we’re not going to criminalize homelessness. I think it’s important that we don’t create unnecessary anxiety. What’s more concerning is that Trump got immunity. That’s more concerning to the rule of law.