This week on Inland Journal, we hear from the candidates for Spokane County prosecutor.
The incumbent, Republican Preston McCollam, has worked as a deputy prosecutor in Spokane since 2015 and was appointed to the top job in September 2025 after Larry Haskell retired.
The challenger, independent candidate Danny Tarkenton, served in the Army National Guard for six years, then for a few years as a deputy prosecutor, first in Benton County, then for a year in Spokane County. She went to Arizona to get a master’s degree, now she’s back in Spokane, seeking the job as the county’s top lawyer.
The candidates answered questions from panel members at a recent forum sponsored by the NAACP. It was held at the Spokane Central Library.
Question: This first question is regarding charging decisions and plea agreements. Prosecutors have significant discretion in deciding whether to file charges, which charges to pursue, and whether to offer plea agreements. Which principles would guide those decisions under your leadership, and what safeguards would you use to promote consistency and fairness?
Preston McCollam: So in terms of a prosecutor's charging decisions and the discretion, that is something that I am familiar with. I'm the only person on this stage that has actually charged cases, that has actually had to evaluate those cases.
And so the law gives us the parameters that we're to use. It gives us the guardrails that we're to use and that is the state law. RCW 994A-411, is the standard that prosecuting attorneys are to apply when making charging decisions and it gives us reasons for which we can make those decisions, and also gives us reasons for which we may reduce charges or not charge cases. For instance, if a charge does not promote respect for the law, that's a basis for deviation that a prosecutor can consider.
But importantly, the state legislature, a separate division of government, gives us the laws of the land. And your prosecutor is a law enforcement officer, right? They are one of the top law enforcement officers within the county. And so it is their duty to enforce the law within that community, and to enforce it without fear or favor.
So the legislature also sets out the hierarchy that we're to apply. They set cases that are Class A felonies. They set cases that are Class B felonies, Class C felonies. Gross misdemeanors, misdemeanors, and then civil infractions. So they set the hierarchy that we're supposed to focus on. And then under the Sentencing Reform Act, which is under RCW 9A, it gives us the hierarchy that we're to apply.
We have serious violent offenses. Those are your first-degree rapes, your first-degree murders, your violent offenses, which are your robberies, your burglaries, and first-degree kidnappings. That's the hierarchy that we're to focus on in terms of where we're focusing our efforts.
And then also, we're listening to the demands and the needs of the community. That includes situations like driving offenses. Repeat DOI offenses have national statistics for fatalities. So we make sure that we're focusing there, as well as domestic violence.
So that hierarchy is laid out for us under state law. And then we're driven in reviewing the charging that comes into the office through law enforcement sources, whether it's Spokane Sheriff, Spokane Police, Liberty Lake, so on and so forth.
Danny Tarkenton: So when I'm considering charging, and you're right, I haven't had that opportunity yet, but maybe after November 3rd. But when I'm assessing this, it is about, sure, there's the mechanics of it, reading the RCW or what have you. Anybody can look that up, by the way.
But what it is about assessing charging decisions is that prosecutors are very, we have a lot of power, the power of discretion. And I try to explain this, that the three most powerful players in the legal system is that there are police, with the power of discretion to arrest, prosecutors, with the power of discretion to charge that arrest, and then judges, with the power of discretion to make a ruling on that.
So police can arrest as many people as they want. It lands on our desk. We see if it meets the elements of the crime that they're allegedly going to be charged with. And then we can dismiss it. In the RCW, we can dismiss a case in the interest of justice. That is how much power of discretion we have, whatever that means to us.
And then judges can't make a ruling on something when they don't have a case.
So that's why it's really important to be able to put in accountability mechanisms to help keep bias in check, because everybody is biased. It's just how we process information. So that's why you can't just look at a case or the facts or the law.
There's more to it than that, because I've mentioned before, the law is completely dependent upon the people. It is not the other way around. And that's why it is so important to have a prosecutor who sees the law, enforces the law, but also assesses how that law impacts that individual, the person that was harmed, the community that was harmed, and how that will ripple out.
So there's more to it than just the law. Everybody's capable of advocating for themselves. But your elected needs to be able to have that context and that's specialization, understanding human behavior, to be effective and efficient as your elected prosecutor.
Question: Data can reveal differences in how racial and socioeconomic groups experience the criminal justice system. What information would you examine to determine whether disparities exist in areas influenced by the prosecutor's office, and how would that information inform your policies and practices?
DT: Well, I'm very data-driven. Spokane, I believe, has a Spokane trending where it can show some of that data of racial disparities when it comes to arresting and domestic violence, crimes, demographics, juvenile, all of it. There is not misdemeanor data yet when it comes to recidivism, but hopefully we can get that in the future. It takes about three years.
But really it is about assessing that and I think when it comes to looking at charging cases in my studies in forensic psychology is that to not actually have those factors when you're assessing the elements of the alleged crime. So instead of seeing, at least when we would look at it, instead of seeing whether somebody's race, gender, sex, you know, religion, whatever it is, we aren't really shown that. That actually helps with some of that bias mechanism. So instead of looking at the person, you're looking at the behavior of prosecuting the harmful behavior. So it actually is really important for prosecutors to be able to have that independent judgment because data shows that once prosecutors make that commitment, it's really hard to shake it off afterwards.
So we want to try to remove as many of those factors that could, I guess, cause bias, the contextual confirmation bias, contextual cues. So we want to try to eliminate that as much as possible. You don't need to know what somebody's race is to know whether or not a crime has occurred. Don't think that that's necessary.
But when it comes to the other things like that, we need to be able to assess data.
So we can look at patterns such as referring people to restorative courts instead of having to write down why somebody should go to restorative courts. You should write down why you don't think somebody is qualified. That's another way to also have people track and recognize their own biases. So those are accountability mechanisms that I hope to implement.
PM: So data in this area is interesting in that we don't do this in a lot of other disciplines, right?
When you look at Spokane, and I know three, four years ago, our numbers were pretty well-known in terms of African-American population being around 2% or 2.2%, Native American being a certain percentage, and so on and so forth. You never walk into an emergency room and say, hey, you know what? Spokane's only 2.2% African-American. So I have too many folks in this emergency room. We got to make that equal, right? That'd be absurd. You would rebel against that doctor, against that medical facility, right? Yet we blame this intersection of the criminal justice system on the courts, on the judges, on prosecutors. But to understand data and for it to have some meaning, you have to understand how the cases get there.
So our office, we're charging conduct, criminal conduct, not color. We're charging conduct, and that conduct is based on calls for help from the community. When this was last looked at a statistical level, and we had experts on both sides presenting cases to a judge, what they found is that our office was actually charging it slightly below in terms of a disparity factor than what we were getting in calls for help or calls for service.
What we also found out through the numbers is that individuals of color were over four and a half times more likely to be victimized, right? And so what I always pose back to people is tell me which crime victim, which African-American crime victim, Native American crime victim doesn't deserve justice due to their assailant skin color or due to their own skin color, right? And those are the decisions that we have to make as prosecutors.
We're not charging cases based on an individual skin color, period. I think data can help inform, but what we're doing is driven by conduct and criminal activity, and state law actually requires that. Under RCW 994A340, a court and a prosecutor can't consider things outside of the law and the facts of a case when making that charging determination, and that is state law. That's not a prosecutor's decision, that's actually the law of the state that courts and prosecutors are bound by.
Question: The next question is, how do you define justice? And how would that definition influence the way you lead the Spokane County Prosecutor's Office and balance public safety, accountability, victims' interests, and fairness to defendants?
PM: Justice, how do you define it? Again, that's difficult.
The role of the prosecutor is to make sure that we are enforcing the law and protecting rights, and for some, that's justice. For some, whatever a jury decides is justice, and I go back to kind of a base context. The concept of mercy and grace. Mercy is withholding the judgment that a person deserves. Grace is giving that person more than they deserve, and making sure that that judgment doesn't happen, and justice is somewhere in the middle there.
We're achieving justice when we're actually doing the right thing, regardless of the impact to myself as a prosecutor, to law enforcement. We're doing the right thing. Justice is done when I find something that's exculpatory evidence and I turn that over to the opposing side. That's my expectation of my attorneys, is we're not getting convictions. Justice is not to get convictions. Justice is actually making sure that you are enforcing the law, providing for those victims, making sure that they have a voice in that community and also making sure that we're not violating the rights of the citizens.
I pull very strongly from our state constitution, our federal constitution, and importantly, the role of a prosecutor is that you are swiftly and zealously enforcing the law, while also maintaining human kindness, and making sure that we're applying the law with common sense. You're not selecting sectors of people or individuals in the community to prosecute just because. You're responding to the needs of the community. You're responding to the actual criminal activity that's in that community and making sure that you are applying that law evenly and fairly. That is justice when you are actually applying the law evenly and fairly, without regard to political influence, political bias, and things of that sort.
This position is a non-political position. You are not a Republican or a Democrat when you're applying the law. The law is the law, and you're applying it based on the context and the experience that you have in front of a courtroom with a judge, a defense lawyer, and all the necessary players.
DT: Justice doesn't always feel good. I've been a victim of crime myself, and to this day, it doesn't seem like I ever received justice for that.
Justice is very much about resolve, about feeling whole again, whether it's on an individual level, but as a prosecutor on a community level, a county-wide level.
When I'm assessing what justice is, because it's so theoretical, like I said, there is the law, there is the intent of Washington law or Constitution, but it always comes down to how it is that we can resolve, because Spokane County is a family unit.
When we're assessing these cases, we're assessing the harm, the harmed and the harmer. What is it that we need to do as the prosecutor? That means sometimes working with opposing counsel. What is it that we need to do that helps enforce that there is accountability because a law violation did occur? And then how is it that our victims or the ones that were harmed can still feel justice or resolve for it, which sometimes feels impossible depending on what the case is. That's why justice doesn't always feel good.
But the purpose is to resolve, to help mend our community together, individually or outward, which is why it's really important that, yes, we have the law and the Constitution. Us as prosecutors, we enforce that law, but we don't just enforce it for the sake of enforcing it. We're enforcing it because they help us with guardrails in order how it is that we can have that resolve within the community. That's what it helps us guide with, and that's why legislation also changes it, and we adapt to it because the people have decided that what happened before was not good enough.
The prosecutor answers to the people. As the elected, I answer to you in how it is that you think resolve should look like. That's what justice should look like.
Question: My question is, what is your driving philosophy on prosecution that guides you in your work?
DT: I guess that's volume two. What drives me as a prosecutor, and when I was looking at those misdemeanor cases or when I was working in Voluntary Treatment Act proceedings, is harm. I'm assessing the harm that is in the form of a law violation or in the ITA of how is it that we can protect this person who is a danger to themselves or others while protecting their rights.
Again, it's about assessing. You have the harm and the harmer, which is less objectifying than how our retributive justice system is. You have the defendant. You have the victim. You have the respondent, but it's the harmed and the harmer. That way, you can assess the behavior in itself, and from there, as the prosecutor, you can ask yourself, does incarcerating this person who just stole $30 worth of food in this economy, by the way, would that be more harmful than if I just refer them to diversion, where there they can do some community service to restore, because the community was harmed when they did that, but to do community service to restore the community that has been harmed, or perhaps even have them pay back whatever it is that they stole in that moment? $30 is a lot of money when you don't have it.
Again, it's assessing, because every time somebody is incarcerated, it's economically and cognitively destabilizing. Every time we do that, we're not saying that people, we do have people that are harmed down the community. Like I said, I've been a victim myself, but again, it's the big picture of our community, of assessing that. Is it more harmful than that? I constantly ask myself that. I felt I was more harmful to my community when I'd have to prosecute cases, hearing, just go through the system anyway. No, the process is punishment itself, so we have to consider that as prosecutors as we're moving through and charging these cases.
PM: My driving factor and driving force when I'm looking at cases is that, for the most part, at the other end of every single criminal case is a human victim. It's all of you. It's the community. When theft is occurring, somebody has lost something.
Having had to talk to crime victims, the grandmother on Social Security whose phone was stolen in the store. To somebody, maybe it's not that big of a deal. Let's celebrate the criminal behavior, but to her, it was a big deal. She has to go out and replace that. She’s lost the photographs of her grandchildren.
When your vehicle gets prowled, any number of those cases, the other end of most of these cases, if you were to look at our Spokane County jail, the vast majority of those folks sitting in that jail are sitting there in Class A felonies.
They’re sitting on violent sex offenses, child molestation, rape, murder. Over 150 of them are violent offenses. Over 350 of those sitting in the jail are currently sitting Class A and B violent offenses. That’s a serious thing. There are real crime victims who are victimized, people who have been shot, beaten, robbed, burglarized.
So, unfortunately in our system, we’re in a situation where we spent a lot of time just celebrating criminal behavior and forgetting that crime victim and forgetting the guarantees that are in our state constitution. Article 1, Section 35 guarantees that crime victims have a voice in this community, that they have a voice in the system.
We don’t have a criminal justice system solely to provide treatment. We have a criminal justice system to make sure that the law-abiding citizens are protected from those who would break those laws. America is a nation of laws or it’s not a nation at all and that’s what makes our nation great is that, in America, the law is king, not any single individual, not any party, and so it is the laws that separate us from chaos and when we’re enforcing the law correctly, we’re remembering and reminding ourselves that there is a crime victim who deserves a voice in that space.
Question: When a young person commits an offense, how should prosecutors balance accountability and public safety with the seriousness of the offense, the young person's circumstances, developmental considerations, and a potential for rehabilitation?
PM: So in the state of Washington, and frankly nationwide, when young people commit offenses, as long as it's a nonviolent offense, and they're under the age of 16, that's going through the juvenile system. So the juvenile court is purely a rehabilitative court. That is the goal of that. It's a restorative court. That's separate from what the adult superior court is, and there's separate statutes that put them into operation.
And so we have a body of case law in the state of Washington that addresses violent offenders, and that addresses the fact that youth are different in the sense that they have, well, for one, their brains are not fully myelinated until they get to a certain age, and our case law is recognizing that and applying that.
Sometimes we've got, you know, agreements and an accord between prosecution and defense, and we say, yep, absolutely, there's an impact there.
But in circumstances where you have young offenders who are committing violent crimes, who are committing the drive-by shootings, homicide, murders, robberies, burglaries, those are things that are very serious. So even though they are young in age, the consequences of those actions last a lifetime for the victims within the community.
So under our state law, courts and prosecutors are required to consider the hallmarks of youthfulness when sentencing an individual or recommending a sentence and so we have a lot of guardrails around that. It's a developing area of case law, and we've had a number of different cases recently that have come down, you know, In re O'Dell, State v. Rogers, that give us the guidelines that we were to use when making decisions like that.
As a prosecutor, I've been involved in dozens, if not hundreds, of resolutions involving young people and violent offenses, and it's always a process that we engage in with the courts and with defense counsel to make sure that we're getting that sentence right. It's not necessarily going to make everybody happy, but we're making sure that we're applying the law as it's being given to us by our state Supreme Court and the state legislature.
DT: This is right up my alley.
Like I said, I have a degree in psychology with a minor in developmental psychology, and I do study juvenile and delinquency in my forensic psychology master's, and that all factors should be considered. It's just not one factor. I understand the law part, but that is also one part of everything else, of the circumstances when it comes to brain development.
That's not even equal either. Sometimes, depending on what the trauma you got, your amygdala could be a little more swollen, a little more scarred up, right? You could have areas that impact your emotional regulation and impulse control.
There are so many different factors that need to be considered when assessing a juvenile that has committed a crime, and it is about assessing the harm. Like I said, I'm about prosecuting the harm, the harmed and the harmer, and it's about resolution.
Even data shows right now that you have an age crime gap where studies are showing that as we get older, we're less likely to commit crimes, especially after you reach those late 20s. If you have this large spike of criminal behavior, then just the data goes to show that we should consider resentencing at a certain point because of those developmental factors on top of the behavior that they did that harmed our community.
Like I said, at the end of the day, it is all about restoring our community that has been harmed. That takes both consideration of the person that was harmed in that crime, but also of what the individual and their circumstances were when they caused that harm. Because, like I said, if you just put people in a box, how are they supposed to get out of that? How are they supposed to move forward, especially at such a young age, to be labeled like that? Once you're in the system, it's hard to get out of it.
So like I said, we need a prosecutor who understands people as well as cases and law because the law is completely dependent upon the people. We decide that these laws work, not that they are just there. The United States is about laws, but only because we agree to it.
Question: This final question is regarding diversion and restorative justice. What role, if any, should diversion, restorative justice, treatment, and other alternatives to traditional prosecution play in Spokane County? What criteria would you use to determine when these approaches are appropriate and whether they are effective?
DT: Yeah, like I said, this is my expertise. So restorative justice is very effective. It's very effective because it's a one-on-one dialogue that you're having. Not only is that because of that setting of the harmed and the harmer, not the defendant and the victim, but you're actually activating areas of the brain that are promoting hormones of oxytocin, social bonding, mirror neuron systems. That's why it's so effective, but empathy is the most important part of it, emotional empathy in particular. So I actually study this all the time.
So when it comes to first-time nonviolent offenders, that is a great start and it stops the likelihood of them recommitting if we can actually implement those restorative practices and diversion.
Really the only area that I had noticed while in my studies where restorative justice isn't particularly effective is that it would be in domestic violence cases because the same environment that makes restorative justice models so effective is also the same environment where the harmed and the harmer in a domestic violence situation is often abused and it puts the person being harmed at a likely risk of the harm reoccurring.
So like I said, data forward, that's when we need to be applying it. Individuals, criminogenic defendants, people that are struggling, crimes of survival, these are all things that we can do to help work together. Like I said, it's a community effort. Spokane County is a family unit.
So when you have, let's say two children, if one of your child hurts the other one, you don't just put them in a box for 60 years. You try to find what is the solution that holds them accountable to where they learn of the harm that they caused while also ensuring that the one, your child that was harmed understands that they are heard, they feel that the harm has been resolved and that they can also move forward as well.
So it's just like that in Spokane County as your elected prosecutor.
PM: Anyone that thinks our office isn't embracing restorative justice and using that as tool simply has not been paying attention. Spokane is very much utilizing those tools. We've been on the front end of that in many respects statewide. We had one of the first and early drug courts we have a active diversion program.
When I became appointed, I got appointed last September, I immediately started a felony diversion program because I recognized the need of being able to send people to somewhere where they can potentially engage and potentially find opportunities to better themselves. But the issues that we have and what a lot of people don't recognize is every single year my office makes more referrals to drug courts, to therapeutic courts, to diversions than we've ever had graduates in any of those programs in their existence. Period.
People have to opt into it and something my dad used to always tell me, right, is opportunities often missed because it wears dirty clothes and looks like work, right? So when our laws are more lenient, if you just plead guilty or go to trial and get convicted than it is to go through a two-year drug court program and actually get clean and do the work and get the treatment, get the mental health treatment, get the drug treatment, a lot of people are just gonna opt to take the felony because it's almost meaningless in many circumstances within our state.
When you look at felony theft, we hear from so many businesses and individuals who have been victimized. You commit felony theft your first time, you're looking at zero to 30 days, your second time, zero to 60 days, your third time, you know, you're looking at a couple of months at most. Not until your seventh felony conviction are you looking at an actual consequence that could get you out of the local jail, right? And so in many respects, you're not getting people wanting to opt into these programs until they are so far or have such a high criminal history and then they have to actually go through and do that hard work. So we very much embrace it. We use it.
We've been expanding programs. We've been partnering with community services. It's very much an important tool for prosecutors. But again, individuals have to choose it. Change doesn't come by chance. It comes by choice.
That’s Spokane County Prosecutor Preston McCollam, speaking at a recent candidate debate sponsored by the NAACP. He’s running to keep his job for another four years. Danny Tarkenton is challenging him. He’s a Republican. She’s an independent.