By Diane Beckham
TDCAA Senior Staff Counsel in Austin
Creating prosecutor offices that reflect the makeup of the communities they serve is vital in creating an equitable criminal justice system, but prosecutor offices often lack the resources to recruit diverse staff members.
With that in mind, TDCAA’s Diversity, Recruitment, and Retention (DRR) Committee created a 12-minute video called “Prosecutors: Journeys to Justice” to persuade high school, college, and law school students to consider a career in prosecution. (Watch the video at www.tdcaa.com/diversity) The video was funded in part through a grant from the Texas Bar Foundation, and we are very grateful for that support.
Members of the committee recorded segments discussing what brought them to a career in prosecution, why diversity is so important to the profession, and what a difference prosecutors can make in the lives of victims, defendants, and members of the community.
Six members of the DRR committee (Chair Jerry Varney and Alex Guio from Dallas County, Sunni Mitchell and Jamie Reyne from Fort Bend County, Kenisha Day from Harris County, and Jeremy Sylestine from Travis County) open the video by telling their stories of what motivated them to choose prosecution. Other members of the committee (Tiana Sanford from Montgomery County, Jarvis Parsons from Brazos County, David Alex from Tarrant County, and Denise Hernandez from Travis County) offered encouragement to viewers to join the profession, along with TDCAA Board Chair Kenda Culpepper (Criminal District Attorney in Rockwall County) and TDCAA Executive Director Rob Kepple. Tiana also provided the voiceover talent for the video narration.
The video is available for anyone to view, and we encourage members to use it in their recruiting efforts. The new diversity page on the TDCAA website will include other resources as well, including notice of upcoming events. At the Annual Conference in Galveston this September, the committee will again host a diversity breakfast at 8 o’clock Friday morning. For more information about the conference, see the TDCAA website at www.tdcaa.com/training/annual-criminal-civil-law-conference-2021.