PHILADELPHIA (January 9, 2026)— The Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced the retirement on Friday of First Assistant District Attorney Robert Listenbee.
“There are no bigger shoes to fill than that of First Assistant District Attorney Robert Listenbee, who has left nothing short of a legacy here at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and throughout his distinguished career,” said District Attorney Larry Krasner. “From growing up as ‘a poor kid from Michigan,’ to serving the youth across the nation and here in Philadelphia, we are honored to have had Bob help guide us at the District Attorney’s Office. I am proud to have had him serve as my First Assistant.”
Robert Listenbee’s Biography:
Robert Listenbee, the First Assistant District Attorney at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, was chosen by District Attorney Krasner to share his depth and breadth of experience working at the local, state, and national levels on juvenile and criminal justice issues. He joined the office in March of 2018.
Under his leadership, the Krasner Administration has dramatically and positively impacted juvenile justice reform policies and the lives of system involved youth in communities across the city. These policies are public health driven, trauma informed, and stress the importance of simultaneously focusing on rehabilitating youth while balancing these efforts with holding youth accountable and maintaining public safety. They are primarily designed to treat children as children by resolving the overwhelming majority of cases involving youth in juvenile court instead of adult court. This new approach has led to a dramatic expansion of youth diversion programs, increased opportunities for the restorative justice program and substantial reductions in youth residential placements.
First Assistant Listenbee also supervises various other activities in the office including the Victim Support Services Division which has developed CARES, an innovative model program that provides comprehensive support services for families of murder victims. He also supervises the DAO’s IT Unit which has drastically improved the delivery of discovery to public defenders and the private bar though the use of Evidence.com, a modern digital evidence system.
Prior to serving as First Assistant, Listenbee served as a Stoneleigh Visiting Fellow and Director of Juvenile Justice System Enhancement Initiatives at Drexel University’s Juvenile Justice and Research Lab. As a fellow, his work centered on policy development and the improvement of support services for homeless youth in the juvenile, criminal justice and child welfare systems in Philadelphia.
In 2012, as co-chair of Attorney General Eric Holder’s National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, he was instrumental in the development of Defending Childhood, a coordinated national response to address children’s exposure to violence.
In March of 2013, Bob was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). In this role, he supervised an annual budget of over $265 million dollars. During his administration, he worked diligently to enhance the core protections for youth provided by the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act. He also worked to reduce out-of-home youth placements and create evidence-based programs and practices. Among the initiatives he championed were halting youth violence, ending the “school-to-prison pipeline”, reducing the involvement of Black and Hispanic youth, girls in general, and LGBTQ-GNC youth in the nation’s juvenile justice system and helping to obtain sustained congressional funding for juvenile indigent defense.
Listenbee developed many of his advocacy skills while serving for 27 years as a defense attorney for the Defender Association of Philadelphia, from 1986 to 2013. For 16 of those years he served as Chief of the Association’s Juvenile Unit where he worked closely with the National Juvenile Defender Center to help to establish a national model for juvenile indigent defense.
Listenbee has received many awards in recognition of his contributions to various reform efforts including the Gerald F. Gault Award from the Defender Association of Philadelphia (2017), the Defender of Children’s rights Award from the National Juvenile Defender Center (2017), the Outstanding Service Award from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (2017), a Special Recognition Award for Exemplary Service in the Juvenile Justice Reform from the Philadelphia Coalition for Victim Advocacy (2011), the W. E. B. Dubois Medal, presented by the President of Harvard University on behalf of the Department of African and African American Studies, for participation in the founding of the Department while participating on a student committee (2003), and the Champion for Change Award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2011).
Listenbee is also an author, lecturer, justice system policy expert and world traveler. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in Political Science in 1972 and a Juris Doctor from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, CA in 1978.
Robert Listenbee, First Assistant District Attorney, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office
Robert Listenbee taught English at the Obwolo Harambee School in the Western Province in Kenya before going to law school from August 1969 to January 1971.
Robert Listenbee taught English at the Obwolo Harambee School in the Western Province in Kenya before going to law school from August 1969 to January 1971.
Robert Listenbee taught English at the Obwolo Harambee School in the Western Province in Kenya before going to law school from August 1969 to January 1971.