"May you live in interesting times..."

LAST JULY BEGAN AN INTERESTING TIME for the National District Attorneys Association. Tom Charron began as our brand new executive director and I became our brand new president -- a couple of rookies leading us into a challenging new season.

And challenges there have been for NDAA and for prosecutors across this country:

• Resources and budgets for prosecutors have been cut for the fifth straight year.
  
  
• More and more resources have been diverted from the war on crime to the war on terrorism.
  
  
• Celebrity trials, CSI and other such shows have turned the serious business of promoting justice into prime time entertainment fodder.
  
  
• The phenomenon known as the CSI effect has tried to persuade the public that guilt can only be established with new scientific silver bullets like DNA and that the tried and true methods of convicting the guilty are old fashioned and unreliable.
  
  
• The resurgence of gang activity has been accompanied by bold intimidation tactics. T-shirts and CDs warned witnesses about becoming "snitches."
  
  
• Methamphetamine has continued to roar eastward across our country leaving destruction, pain and new criminal issues for prosecutors to contend with. How much thought did we give to "precursor" drugs five years ago?

Yes, this year had its challenges and we at NDAA resolved to be aggressive about facing them.

• Legislation. We moved our legislative meeting in Washington D.C. to a time (February) when Congress was actively in session and commencing work. We continued to press forward on loan forgiveness for assistant prosecutors. We met with the new attorney general and let him know our priorities. And we have gotten behind legislation to combat methamphetamine. But we need to do more to raise our profile in Washington D.C.
  
  
• Communication. For the first time ever we conducted a media blitz visiting with producers and reporters ftom NBC, ABC, the Nightly News, the McNeilILehrer News Hour, USA Today and others. US News and World Report featured the CSI impact on prosecutors. Again, we made some progress, but more needs to be done. Indeed, we are planning another blitz on the media in New York City very soon.
  
  
• Education. Perhaps our most important initiative and our most successful endeavor this year. The National Advocacy Center has been established as a permanent fixture in the Department of Justice budget, assuring a stable and secure existence on which to build for the future. The roll-out of our distance education initiative, which will allow programs, courses, lectures and even CLE trainings to be zapped into prosecutors' television and computer screens across the country, took place this year.
  
  
• Organization. Our committees, our bylaws, our meeting schedules and our membership have all received a thorough re-structuring. We should be a leaner, more efficient, more responsive association than ever before under the leadership of Tom Charron, who has proven to be a very wise choice as our new executive director.

It is my belief that for prosecutors, for NDAA, for our American justice system and especially for the people we serve ... the best is yet to come.