During a virtual forum Wednesday evening, the candidates looking to succeed term-limited District Attorney George Brauchler in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District scrapped over criminal trial experience, the necessity of traditional purely punitive prosecution measures and whether the criminal court system in the district embodies how they each define justice.

The next DA will inherit a heavily populated district: The 18th District covers Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties and contains about a fifth of Colorado’s population, with well over a million residents.

Some of the country’s most high-profile killings of the past few decades have occurred in the jurisdiction, including the massacres at a Chuck E. Cheese and an Aurora movie theater.

Colorado’s DA election cycles run concurrently with presidential election years. This year, the race in the 18th District is one of only six contested DA races out of Colorado’s 22 judicial districts.

CCJRC4Action, a nonprofit affiliate of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, organized Wednesday’s forum, which was live-streamed on Facebook. CCJRC4Action previously hosted DA candidate forums for the 1st and 17th Judicial Districts. The organization has not endorsed either Kellner or Padden.

Republican candidate John Kellner has worked in the 18th District under Brauchler, also a Republican, and is currently the chief deputy DA for Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties. He has made expanding specialty courts, also known as problem-solving courts, a key part of his platform.

Specialty court programs are designed as alternatives to incarceration intended to treat root causes of crime and commonly include drug, DUI, mental health and veterans’ treatment courts. Kellner has previously said he believes it’s a misconception that all Republican DA candidates want to lock up offenders and “throw away the key.”

His Democratic challenger, Amy Padden, sought the 2018 nomination for Colorado attorney general. More recently, she started an adult diversion program in the 5th Judicial District, which covers Clear Creek, Lake, Eagle and Summit counties, under District Attorney Bruce Brown.

Padden said she wants to increase state funding for diversion and said it’s more effective than incarceration at reducing recidivism rates.

When she talks about traditional purely punitive prosecution, it’s to say she believes that using it as a default approach for all types of crimes has not effectively reduced crime rates and improved community safety.

Despite their stated philosophical differences about prosecution, the candidates offered similar characterizations when asked by moderator Leanne Wheeler how they define justice: Making prosecution decisions based on each person’s particular circumstances and a process that leads to fair results, meaning equal justice doesn’t mean treating every defendant the same.

“Seeking justice is an individual issue in each particular case,” Kellner said. “No matter who you are, no matter your station in life, what color your skin is, what your background is, your religion, it’s about doing the right thing as a prosecutor for the right time and for the right reasons.”

But Padden and Kellner disagreed on whether the 18th District’s current approaches to prosecution reflect that definition of justice. Padden said she has heard accounts from defense attorneys that prosecutors in the district don’t have a lot of discretion to consider defendants’ particular circumstances in their decisions and that participation in diversion is disproportionately offered to white defendants.

“We have to ensure that these programs are available to everyone; that they’re accessible to everyone,” she said. “And justice isn’t just about getting a win. … It’s about doing the right thing in all these cases.

And sometimes with a violent offender, yes, that means going for the long sentence. But in other cases, with nonviolent offenders, that means working towards rehabilitation.”

However, Padden did not give specific examples of anecdotes from defense attorneys.

Kellner offered clarification on a difference between diversion programs and specialty courts. He said problem-solving courts are better targeted at reducing incarceration than diversion because people who are eligible for diversion aren’t facing prison time for their charges.

Defendants facing the possibility of incarceration have typically been charged with violent crimes or repeat felonies, Kellner said.

“We’re not sending people who are looking at diversion to prison sentences,” he said. “Earlier I talked about problem-solving courts. That’s where you’re actually taking people who might be going to prison and sending them to a rehabilitative type of court.”

The candidates also expressed similar views about defining root causes of systemic racism and how it feeds into inequities in the criminal court system, pointing to historical inequities in education, economics and early involvement in the criminal system that can turn into a self-perpetuating cycle.

Padden and Kellner both said they support collecting, independent review and publishing of race and ethnicity data to pinpoint particular disparities in prosecution.

“It’s not just about identifying inequities in the system. It’s about building public trust in what we do,” Kellner said. “As the district attorney and as someone who has taken an oath to uphold our Constitution … I take that seriously.”

Kellner and Matt Maillaro, who challenged Padden for the Democratic nomination in June’s primary,have criticized what they characterize as her scarcity of criminal trial experience. But Padden said she believes leadership experience matters more than a background in criminal trial work.

She pointed to her experience supervising prosecutors while working in the U.S. Attorney’s office, managing budgets and participating in national working groups about the use of solitary confinement in prison and implicit bias in federal prosecutions.

“I bring those skills to the table, plus I have actual experience in implementing criminal justice reform,” Padden said.