You may have noticed a dangerous trend that’s been spreading across the nation in recent years. There is a new generation of exceedingly woke District Attorneys and state prosecutors who have been pushing a soft-on-crime agenda that places the welfare and comfort of convicted criminals over the safety of the community. We’ve covered many of them here, including Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, Los Angeles DA George Gascon, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and Chicago State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Other, less famous (or notorious) examples abound. But as the New York Post reveals this week, many of them have one thing in common. Most of them have ties to a “think tank” in the Hell’s Kitchen district of New York City known as the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution located in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Many of these woke prosecutors are either graduates of the institute or have close ties to it. And the type of propaganda being taught to the next generation of prosecutors is simply off the charts in terms of wokeness and “reform” nonsense.

Ground zero for woke district attorneys is a left-wing think tank in the heart of the Big Apple.

The soft-on-crime approach espoused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other progressive prosecutors in troubled Democratic cities has been nurtured and advanced by a policy center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, no less.

The public college in Hell’s Kitchen, where many future cops are educated, is home to the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, which since 2016 — with the help of controversial figures such as Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx, Los Angeles DA George Gascón and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin — has been instrumental in reshaping how prosecutors across the country view crime and punishment.

The Post reviewed a number of the documents and coursework available from the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution on its website and it’s easy to see where many of these prosecutors are getting their dangerously stupid ideas from. They are big supporters of so-called “bail reform” laws, of course, urging prosecutors to be “more proactive and less punitive.”

A paper titled Vision for the Modern Prosecutor declares, “No one should be defined by their bad conduct alone.” Most of you have likely heard similar sentiments before. ‘Say what you will about Hitler, but he was quite the painter and an admirer of fine art.’

Another paper calls for charging criminals with fewer serious crimes and describes ways to keep them out of jail entirely. It goes on to suggest that offenders should not be referred to as offenders or convicts, but rather “something that respects their humanity.” If you have followed any of the early works of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, some of this is probably starting to sound familiar. It’s almost certainly not a coincidence that Bragg’s top Deputy District Attorney is a former Executive Director of the institute.

A paper titled “Creating a Culture of Racial Equity” suggests that District Attorneys create a hotline where whistleblowers can turn in “internal obstructionists” who are uncomfortable with the new boss’s woke policies. That whole whistleblower idea seems to have backfired on Chesa Boudin when a whistleblower instead ratted him out for hiding evidence that would have cleared a police officer in an excessive use of force case. Oops.

There are too many more examples of woke literature and courses than we have time for here but you can review them at the link. These policies quickly fall to pieces when they are applied to the real world. The idea that you can’t define someone “by their bad conduct” is progressive balderdash. Murder is not simply “bad conduct.” Neither are sexual assault, carjacking, or selling illegal weapons and dangerous drugs to children. If you are engaged in such activities, that is how society will define you. And we definitely don’t need prosecutors who are graduates of this bizarre institute playing the part of referees for us during the current crime waves in our major cities.