Democrat Natasha Irving is challenging Jonathan Liberman for District Attorney in District VI, which covers the four Midcoast counties of Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Knox and Waldo.

Irving is a lawyer in Waldoboro. She is not a career prosecutor and has never served as a prosecutor. Instead, most of her cases have been court-appointed defenses, child protective law, family practice, and other law practices, including wills and estates.

She said she was moved to run for D.A. when she saw how many criminal cases she was working on spilled over into family law. “You’d have a minor case, but then someone failed to pay a fine, and they go to jail, and their kids get taken from them, disrupting the whole family." The court system is based on punishment, Irving said. “There doesn’t seem to be any option other than fines or jail time. I’d much rather see a focus on repair, restitution and rehabilitation.”

Irving is a believer in restorative justice. She spoke about a pilot program for shoplifting in Belfast. “The offender is confronted by the victim,” she said. The owner of the store tells the offender how shoplifting affects the store. In some way, the offender also has to pay for what was taken, which may include working for the store owner until the sum is paid off, or doing community service elsewhere.  But the victim feels heard, and feels like justice was actually done, she said.

In nonviolent situations, an offender should be offered community service to avoid jail time, Irving said. “We’ve had the same system of crime and punishment for decades, and it’s not working out that well. There’s a lack of creative thinking, and accountability.”

Irving related the story of a woman sent to jail for driving without registration. The woman had already registered the car by the time of her arraignment, and Irving said she asked the ADA to consider a deferred disposition because the woman was scheduled for a double lung transplant and required oxygen. The ADA unequivocally said no – that the offender should have thought about that.

One of the things she said sabotage people on bail conditions is relapsing while on bail. “It’s a violation of their conditions of release,” she said.  But, she said, relapse is almost an inevitable part of recovery. “We are sending people to jail for having an illness. We wouldn’t do that with any other illness.”

She said it is also counter-intuitive to remove licenses people need to get to work and pay fines and back child support when paying restitution and child support are common condition of release. “Requiring an interlock device during a deferred disposition, instead of a a conviction resulting in a mandatory loss of license, gets to the root problem: road safety.” The device is attached to a steering wheel to prevent someone who has been drinking from turning on a car. The person blows into the device and it records blood alcohol level. “We want people to go to work, we just want to make sure they are not drinking and driving,” she said.

Irving said she is in favor of “Problem Solving Courts” like drug court, and will advocate for those courts to come to the Midcoast.  “LD 1885 was a bill to establish a drug court in the Midcoast, but no one from the DAs office testified in favor of this bill at the public hearing held in April, and the bill eventually died,” she said.  She said she also favors approaches like the shoplifting program in Belfast, which is a Restorative Justice program., as an alternative to incarceration.

 Irving said she would advocate with the Legislature and AGs office because that is part of the job of DA, but additionally, she would advocate for “common sense criminal justice reform that keeps us safe and costs less money for the State of Maine.”

However, she doesn’t believe violent offenders should be released without very specific safeguards in place, saying that the conditions of release should be emphasized, not an arbitrary cash amount of bail. She believes that the DA should ask for violent offenders to be held without bail, but if they are to be released, to use very stringent safeguards. “Women who come forward with domestic violence allegations are very often left in the position of losing their breadwinner,” she said. “If you can’t pay rent, or if you can’t buy food for your family, you are much more likely to be uncooperative with prosecution.” She said families need to be supported through prosecution so that the DA will get the convictions that keep families safe.

While real offenders often get a slap on the wrist, she said, Mainers who have fallen on hard times are “nickle and dimed” by fines they can’t pay or they are sent to jail which might cost them their jobs and livelihoods.

Irving said she is in favor of working with police and sheriffs’ offices, mental and medical health providers, addiction resource specialists, social workers, housing specialists, and others outside a jail setting. “I understand when an officer brings in someone suffering from addiction disorder they’re worried is going to die. But they shouldn’t stay there. They should get community based treatment at home.  I’ve been very impressed by the work done by some police departments in the Midcoast. We need to work together as a team to get people back to a place where they are contributing members of society.”