HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro spent six years as Pennsylvania’s top prosecutor, a notch on his resume that has become an important part of his political brand.
He touts himself as someone who can bridge the uncomfortable divide between law and order and criminal justice reform.
The Democratic governor peppers his new memoir, Where We Keep The Light, with reflections and opinions on both those worlds, and notes — correctly — that his views on policing and the role of law enforcement in communities have put him at odds with the more progressive wing of his party.
For instance, he writes about the deep respect he has for police, and his belief that the emphasis should be on proper training in deescalation and use of force, rather than on defunding police departments.
But Shapiro — widely expected to run for president in 2028 — also emphasizes his belief in second chances and the work over his career to expedite the release of people convicted of nonviolent crimes and to improve probation and parole systems.
This account leaves out key details about his record on commutations and pardons — which became a source of controversy with some in his party — and papers over problems with one of his most-touted police accountability pushes.
It is Shapiro’s story to tell. But below are some areas Spotlight PA pinpointed as missing the full context.
Board of Pardons
Shapiro dedicates only a few paragraphs to his time on Pennsylvania’s five-member Board of Pardons. As attorney general, he had a guaranteed seat on the five-member panel, which reviews criminal convictions and decides whether to recommend a person’s sentence be commuted or pardoned. In the book, he discusses the board primarily to explain his beliefs on the death penalty, policing, and criminal justice.
That paucity glosses over his voting record while on the board. It also belies the impact the role had on some of his political relationships — namely, with Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, who was the state’s lieutenant governor for four years starting in 2019 and also a board member.
It was probably one of the worst-kept secrets in Harrisburg that Shapiro clashed with Fetterman over when and how often to commute or provide clemency in cases before the board. Their time on the panel strained their relationship badly enough that Fetterman, in his own recently released memoir, writes it's the reason the two no longer speak.
“Shapiro was far more cautious, and at a certain point, I began to think that what was influencing him was not mere caution but political ambition,” Fetterman writes in Unfettered, referring to a meeting where Shapiro voted against the vast majority of cases.
In 2019, for instance, the board voted on 41 commutations, which at the time was the largest number in decades. Where Fetterman tied with another board member in voting in favor of the most commutations, Shapiro approved the least, according to an analysis by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
Shapiro’s office at the time said he had supported more commutations than all of Pennsylvania’s attorneys general in a quarter century. But the news organization reported that Shapiro also had more chances to vote on such matters, since the board under then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, had vastly scaled up the number of applications it reviewed.
In Where We Keep The Light, Shapiro explains his approach to the work in broad strokes, saying he took the job seriously, studied cases with a near obsessive attention to detail, and struggled with condemning people to die in prison versus releasing them and putting a community at risk. (The Board of Pardons is not the final say on cases. The panel makes recommendations, with the governor making the final decision.)
“I would be so emotionally spent leading up to these meetings that Lori [Shapiro’s wife] would make a point to force me to take breaks throughout those days,” the governor writes.
Shapiro’s more cautious approach to pardon cases has bled into his decision-making as governor.
Spotlight PA has reported that in his first two years in the job, Shapiro has signed about half of the clemency applications recommended to him by the board. In contrast, Shapiro’s predecessor, Wolf, granted nearly all of the applications recommended to him by the board in his second term.
Floyd-inspired misconduct database
Shapiro takes time in the book to explain his positions on policing, which he said made him unpopular with some fellow Democrats in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Shapiro writes that he believes the formula for creating safer communities requires both hiring and training more police officers, and investing in neighborhoods and community anti-violence organizations.
“Some loud voices on the political Left came for me after I said all of that and challenged their assertion that defunding the police was the answer,” he writes. “Some even threatened to primary me and end my career.”
After Floyd’s death, Shapiro says he pushed for a statewide police misconduct database with information on disciplinary actions, performance evaluations, and attendance records that could be used as part of a background check when hiring officers.
“What this meant was that departments have access to misconduct and disciplinary records of officers … which hopefully gives the public more trust in the people who are there to protect them,” he writes.
The database’s actual effectiveness is far less storied.
As Spotlight PA reported last year, the database is riddled with loopholes. The 2020 law that created it does not require law enforcement agencies to upload disciplinary actions that don’t result in final or binding disciplinary action, meaning there could be serious complaints against an officer that go unreported.
Those agencies also do not have to upload records of officers who left their employment before the law took effect in 2021.
And while the law requires police departments to use the database, there is also no penalty if they don’t.
Construction contractor case
One high-profile case championed by the Office of Attorney General while Shapiro was in charge, involved a major Pennsylvania construction contractor, Glenn O. Hawbaker.
In 2021, Shapiro’s office accused Hawbaker of siphoning millions of dollars in retirement and health benefits from its employees.
Shapiro writes about the Hawbaker prosecution, saying it “boils my blood” when people are overlooked or taken advantage of by powerful organizations or interests. That is the reason he said he created a labor division within the office: “I had seen too many workers have their rights violated and get held down by the system.”
He describes the work of Hawbaker employees as “backbreaking” and “dangerous,” referencing their shifts on the sides of highways and atop bridges. He said he met with some of them, including one woman whose “thumbs had slid off their bones by about a quarter inch” because of the shovels and hand tools she used. “They didn't sit where they used to,” Shapiro writes, “They certainly didn't work the same.”
He continues: “This case, like most for me, boiled up from the bottom — from the people who were wronged, whom I listened to.”
The company pleaded no contest to the charges in 2021 and agreed to pay more than $20 million in restitution to its employees as part of a plea agreement.
Left unsaid in the memoir is the messy aftermath.
That plea agreement was followed by protracted litigation over the state’s decision to bar the company from receiving state contracts. A spokesperson for Hawbaker did not respond to a request for comment.
Under Shapiro’s administration, the company has received more than $300 million in contracts from PennDOT, Pittsburgh news station WTAE reported last year — this despite Shapiro reiterating last year that he believes the company should not be rewarded with taxpayer-funded business.
When asked by the news station what he thought about Hawbaker continuing to receive state contracts, Shapiro said: "Obviously, my view is they shouldn't be eligible, but there is a separate process that has to go on that began during the Wolf administration and is reaching, I think, its conclusion now.”