Hennepin County Attorney
25 episodes listed below
Public safety, reform, and the law beneath both.
We Don't Have to Choose treats public safety as a question of evidence, law, and lived consequences. Its long-form interviews connect Hennepin County concerns to broader debates over prosecution, sheriffs, youth justice, mass shootings, and violence prevention.
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We Don't Have to Choose is a long-form criminal justice show centered on the claim that public safety and reform can strengthen each other. It is deliberate work. Rather than chasing headlines, the show takes current conflicts and asks what authority, evidence, history, and policy actually say. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty appears throughout the episodes as a careful interviewer, often beginning with a practical definition before moving toward the broader stakes. The conversations are rooted in Hennepin County, but they rarely remain confined there. Minneapolis becomes a way to talk about federal power, law enforcement coordination, prosecutorial discretion, and public fear. One episode examines sheriffs through Jessica Pischko's work on county authority. Another turns to adolescent development with Dr. Robert Kinsher, treating age, context, and brain science as central to justice policy. A conversation with Dr. James Densley addresses mass shootings with unusual gravity, including prevention, school drills, and the risks of creating a cultural script for violence. Other episodes bring in Alec Karakatsanis, Radley, Sasha Cotton, and James Foreman Jr. to discuss policing, media narratives, violence prevention, and mass incarceration. The show is openly reform-minded, but it is not casual about safety. Its recurring move is to press reform claims through data, legal structure, and concrete examples. It also keeps returning to institutional responsibility: who calls whom, who preserves evidence, who has power, and what happens when systems fail to act in time. The pacing is patient. Long answers are allowed to stand. That gives the show room to distinguish between punishment and problem solving, between local police and elected sheriffs, and between fear-driven policy and prevention. It can be grave, especially when discussing ICE, mass shootings, youth detention, and criminalization. Still, the dominant mode is explanatory rather than theatrical. We Don't Have to Choose is best understood as a policy conversation for listeners who want the machinery of public safety made visible.
Made for: For listeners interested in criminal justice reform, local government, prosecution, policing, and public safety policy. It especially suits people who prefer careful institutional analysis over quick partisan argument.
What sets it apart: The show is unusually grounded in the prosecutor's vantage point while staying focused on reform, prevention, and evidence. It connects local Hennepin County questions to broader structures without losing the practical details of implementation.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty hosts this monthly podcast to discuss how we can improve the legal system without compromising public safety with local and national experts.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mary Moriarty turns research on crime, development and institutional authority into concrete questions about prosecution, prevention and public accountability.
Mary Moriarty begins with a practical question: what actually produces public safety? Her long-form conversations test that question against crime data, adolescent development, mass-shooting prevention and the authority exercised by sheriffs and prosecutors.
Mary Moriarty brings crime data to the public-safety argument, where your priors do not get immunity.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical prosecutor-level look at public safety, evidence, and the coordination that keeps cases alive.
Mary Moriarty sets a clear frame around prosecutors, public safety, and the day-to-day work of coordinating across jurisdictions. Larry Krasner and Parisa Dogani-Tafti add useful local texture, with Arlington County, Falls Church, and the D.C.
A clear, historically grounded look at sheriffs, from Minneapolis anxiety to the arguments behind sheriff power.
Mary Moriarty and Jessica Pischko use Minneapolis as a starting point for a wider argument about why sheriffs matter now. The discussion stays grounded in immediate fears, including parents trying to answer children's ICE concerns and a local police chief's account of an…
A measured case for understanding youth crime through development, context, and public safety.
Mary Moriarty opens by pressing on the assumption that 18 marks a clean divide between childhood and adulthood, and Dr. Robert Kinsher answers with a calm argument for development, context, and data as part of public safety.
A policy-minded look at drills, insider familiarity, and the prevention question now in focus.
Mary Moriarty centers the conversation on the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis and the harder question of how another one might be prevented. She turns to Dr. James Densley, who, with Dr.
Public safety and reform are linked through crime data, prosecutorial purpose, and a transparency dashboard.
The piece frames public safety and reform as a single argument, moving from Mary Moriarty's opening explanation into crime trends, prosecution, and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office view of what it can change.
County government, translated into everyday Missoula life.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty interviews investigator Chris Band and senior attorney Alex Halverson about the office's two-person worker protection unit, built on a 2019 Minnesota law that made wage theft a specific crime.
Mary Moriarty opens the show with Larry Krasner and Parisa.
Mary Moriarty opens by explaining why she and Jessica Pischko are sharing this conversation now.
Mary Moriarty opens with a practical question about how to make the criminal legal system work better.
Mary Moriarty opens with the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty interviews Alec Karakatsanis about his book 'Copaganda' and the need for criminal justice reform to achieve public safety.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty interviews Radley Balko about his background and the failures of the criminal legal system, arguing that reform and public safety are not mutually exclusive.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty discusses with violence prevention expert Sasha Cotton how criminal justice reforms can enhance public safety.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty introduces a podcast about reconciling public safety with criminal justice reform, featuring an interview with author James Foreman Jr.
Mary Moriarty opens with the show's title and ties it back to Rachel Barco's presentation at the University of Minnesota.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty introduces the podcast's theme of not choosing between public safety and reform, and previews a conversation with Resmaa Menakem about trauma and the legal system.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty introduces her podcast 'We Don't Have to Choose' and discusses with Rachel Barco why the criminal legal system fails to keep us safe and how reform can improve public safety.