Los Angeles County’s newly elected district attorney George Gascón resigned today from the California District Attorney’s Association (CDAA), the group that represents most California DAs and that is now fighting Gascón’s criminal justice reforms. 

Statewide prosecutors’ associations are among the most punitive forces in the criminal legal system, in California and elsewhere. While they are largely unknown to the general public, they have historically lobbied local and state governments to keep prison sentences long and to protect prosecutors’ vast powers.

Gascón, who took over running the nation’s largest prosecuting agency in December, chided the organization for its opposition to reform in an open letter published online today. Among other criticisms, the letter mentioned the CDAA’s failure to appoint a single person of color to its 17-member board of directors; its opposition a 2014 initiative that Gascón himself authored to lower the severity of some charges; its siphoning money away from environmental and workplace-safety prosecutions to instead lobby against legal-system reform; and its rejection of what Gascón said were “commonsense criminal justice reforms” backed by the majority of Californians.

“CDAA continues to be a member organization solely for those willing to toe the ‘tough on crime’ line,” Gascón wrote today. “For the rest of us, it is a place that fails to support us, our communities, or the pursuit of justice.”

The association has been one of the loudest voices in California urging Sacramento lawmakers and state voters to reject reforms. It has for instance opposed successful ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana or reduce penalties for drug offenses, and fought similar legislation.

“The CDAA has enjoyed a very cushy and close relationship with the California legislature for decades,” Anne Irwin, who heads the reform group Smart Justice California, told The Appeal: Political Report. “They have been unrivaled … and they spoke with one voice. They were able to influence a tremendous amount of legislation over the decades and able to shape criminalization in California.” 

Irwin added that Gascón’s decision could dramatically alter the CDAA’s power in Sacramento and continue to break apart the notion that prosecutors have “one voice.” Los Angeles County and its 10 milion residents represent over one fourth of California’s population.

Gascón, who is a Democrat, is the second sitting DA to leave the CDAA over its opposition to criminal justice reforms. San Joaquin DA Tori Salazar, a Republican, sounded a similar note last year when she announced her own departure, calling on state DAs to “look at ourselves, accept responsibility” for the “generational harm” caused by tough-on-crime policies.

Gascón, the former San Francisco DA and LAPD assistant chief, was elected last year against an incumbent DA on a platform that included progressive promises like never seeking the death penalty and not using sentencing enhancements to trump up “gang” charges against defendants in court. Since his election, he has instructed line prosecutors to not seek cash bail and to not use sentencing enhancements that greatly increase prison terms, among other changes.

But many of his own prosecutors have revolted. At the end of December, the Association of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles County (ADDA), the group representing Gascón’s employees, sued Gascón to prevent him from enacting his promised reforms. A state judge blocked some of Gascón’s instructions last week.

In January, the CDAA filed an amicus brief in Los Angeles County Superior Court supporting the ADDA’s lawsuit against Gascón and claiming that Gascón’s reforms will ensure “the voices of victims fall silent and the might of the State has failed its most vulnerable.” 

The CDAA’s membership is dominated by prosecutors who advocate a much harsher approach to criminal justice than the one on which Gascón was elected. San Diego County DA Summer Stephan, a former Republican who now identifies as an independent, in January called Gascón’s ideas “unlawful” and attempted to wrest control of a high-profile double-murder case from Gascón’s office by claiming that the accused would not face enough prison time if found guilty.

Today, Gascón fired back and said it is instead the CDAA that is harming Californians.

“Ultimately, CDAA cannot claim a commitment to prosecutorial excellence while misappropriating millions of public dollars, ignoring the will of the voters, and fighting reforms that evidence clearly indicates will enhance safety, racial equity, and save scarce taxpayer resources,” Gascón wrote.

“This appears to be a publicity stunt to divert attention from his favoring criminals at the expense of victims and growing calls for his recall,” El Dorado County DA Vern Pierson, the current CDAA president, told the Political Report in a statement. (Pierson also blamed the organization’s diversity issues on the fact that Gascón himself unseated former L.A. County DA Jackie Lacey, a Black woman, last year.) “As for reform, the CDAA, in fact, sponsors many programs, including DA-initiated diversion prorams and courts for folks who have mental issues, are homeless or veterans. Our prosecutors are working to protect children who live in violent homes because we know they are more likely to become part of the cycle of violence when they reach adulthood.”

***

Gascón’s move comes at a time when a new generation of left-leaning prosecutors around the country is rethinking its relationship with the statewide associations  their predecessors have long supported. Besides lobbying legislatures around the country to adopt tougher statutes, these associations have worked to keep their own members in line.

In 2017, for example, after Orange-Osceola (Orlando) State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced she would not seek the death penalty in any cases while in office, the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association chucked Ayala under the bus and supported then-Gov. Rick Scott’s efforts to remove her from overseeing any capital cases. 

But these agencies are beginning to lose their grip on America’s criminal legal system. In 2018, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner quit the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association and called the group the “voice of the past” when it comes to justice issues. Salazar followed suit by leaving the CDAA last year, and now some prosecutorial candidates are making this into a campaign issue. 

Earlier this month, three candidates running for DA in Manhattan told the Political Report that they would not join the District Attorneys Association of New York (DAASNY), that state’s prosecutorial lobbying arm, if elected. DAASNY, as is typical for these associations, has been fighting efforts to turn the corner from decades of draconian policies in New York It lobbied against New York’s 2019 landmark bail-reform law, for instance, and, since then, has even trained prosecutors on how to use legal loopholes to hold people pretrial anyway.

“Elected prosecutors have, until very recently, been seen as a pivotal part of the punishment system — there’s been a very clear pass-off, that begins with police, who then hand people off to prosecutors,” Irwin told the Political Report. “They’ve been on the same team, pursuing the same goal, which has largely been to hold people accountable through criminalization and incarceration, as much as possible for as long as possible.” 

***

In September, a set of California DAs formed a new lobbying association, the Prosecutors Alliance of California, with a stated goal of promoting policies more aligned with criminal justice reform. This came on the heels of a similar group that emerged in Virginia in July to lobby that state’s legislature to pass laws reducing incarceration rates and increasing alternatives to imprisonment.

The California group includes Salazar and Gascón, as well as San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin and Contra Costa County DA Diana Becton, who are still in the CDAA.

Gascón himself had stayed in the CDAA until today, including throughout his tenure as the San Francisco DA.

In his letter today, Gascón said that, now that California has a progressive competitor to the CDAA, he no longer needs to support an association that won’t support him.

“I participated in CDAA for nine years,” he said. “I paid dues, attended our sessions, and assigned staff to the legislative committee all in hopes of building an organization that took account of my perspective and that of a majority of Californians. What has become clear to me after a decade of participation is that the organization is unwilling to change and grow with its members and our constituents.”

Roughly a third of California lawmakers represent Los Angeles County, and Irwin expects that the CDAA losing the membership of that county’s DA will alter the political pressures legislators face in the coming years. Sentencing reforms and bills that promote alternatives to policing are on the state’s agenda in the 2021 session.

“My prediction is that CDAA, like other law-enforcement groups facing their own falling out of public favor, will resort to what they know is their most potent tool to regain public trust: fearmongering,” she said.

This article has been updated with a statement from Vern Pierson, the El Dorado County DA and the current CDAA president.

The post Los Angeles D.A. George Gascón Leaves California’s Powerful D.A. Association appeared first on Bolts.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan coalition of elected prosecutors and candidates in California announced the formation of the Prosecutors Alliance of California, a progressive alternative to the state’s powerful prosecutors’ group, the California District Attorneys Association. The move signals a dramatic shift in how prosecutors will influence the criminal justice reform agenda in America’s most populous state.

“A broad spectrum of political ideologies believe in a smaller, less punitive, and more equitable system of justice,” said San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar in a statement. “This is one of the few issues in America’s discourse upon which Republicans and Democrats can find common ground, and we welcome prosecutors from across the political spectrum to join us.” 

“Traditional law enforcement organizations abide by a philosophy that hasn’t changed for 40 years,” added San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, noting law enforcement unions’ “vested interest” in policies that lead to more policing and criminalization. “We can no longer allow these groups to distort what’s in their interest with what’s in the interest of your safety.”

In addition to Salazar and Boudin, Contra Costa County DA Diana Becton and current Los Angeles DA candidate George Gascón have also joined the organization, which offers membership to current and former prosecutors—including line prosecutors—at the local, state, and federal levels.

Gascón, Boudin’s predecessor as San Francisco’s top elected prosecutor, is running against incumbent Los Angeles County DA Jackie Lacey this fall. If his challenge proves successful, the PAC’s inaugural members would represent four of the largest 15 counties in California that are together home to about a third of the state’s population.

Salazar, a Republican, made headlines earlier this year for becoming the first of the state’s 58 district attorneys to leave the CDAA. “As criminal justice reform sweeps through California and the nation, I witnessed the CDAA oppose most reform-based initiatives, which tells me the association is out of touch and unwilling to find new approaches to criminal justice,” she wrote in her resignation letter. In an interview with The Appeal: Political Report, Salazar predicted that some of her colleagues could follow suit. “I think more DAs are going to think about their decisions more closely and differentiate between their decision of what’s best for their county and what the CDAA is recommending,” she said.

The CDAA has long functioned as one of the most vociferous anti-reform voices in Sacramento, fighting proposals to, among many other things, reclassify certain nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors, increase the use of parole, prevent children under 16 from being tried in adult court, and amend the state’s notorious three strikes law. The CDAA subsequently disputed Salazar’s characterizations of its work, calling them “a disparagement on our professional reputations” in a January letter. (Boudin and Becton, who plan to remain members of the CDAA, declined to sign the letter.) 

El Dorado County DA Vern Pierson, the CDAA’s president, told The Appeal that he “welcomes” the PAC’s arrival, claiming that his organization represents a broad spectrum of political viewpoints. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to have another advocacy group,” he said.

Among the new organization’s top priorities will be to push for a new state bar ethics rule, which is already under consideration, to prevent prosecutors from accepting campaign donations from law enforcement unions. Pierson told The Appeal that the CDAA believes the proposed rule is unconstitutional. 

“This group of prosecutors knows how critical their independence is to their role and their communities’ trust in them,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, the PAC’s executive director, in a press conference. She added that they may explore legislative alternatives as well.

With increasing frequency, prosecutors across the country have been taking a hard look at their membership in professional organizations that oppose efforts to reduce incarceration and decriminalize addiction and poverty. In late 2018, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner left the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association while denouncing its attempts to link Philadelphia to the organization’s policy platform. “The [PDAA] will not claim legitimacy of its most important criminal justice jurisdiction and try to take us back 40 years,” he said.

This past summer, 11 Virginia prosecutors formed the Virginia Proressive Prosecutors for Justice to serve as a counterweight to the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys, a powerful tough-on-crime voice in the state legislature. “It gives us a way to counter the narrative that safety and justice are opposite values,” Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church, told The Appeal: Political Report.

The post A New Association of Progressive D.A.s Could Overhaul California’s Reform Movement appeared first on Bolts.

San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Salazar left the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA) in January over its resistance to reform. “We just felt that they were in opposition to almost all change that the voters of California had asked us to enact,” she said. In California, and elsewhere, prosecutors’ statewide associations have consistently lobbied to make laws more punitive and opposed changes that would reduce incarceration.

Then, in a Jan. 31 letter obtained by the Political Report, the CDAA objected to what it called Salazar’s “accusations against our integrity and basic compassion towards those enmeshed in the criminal justice system.” Printed on CDAA letterhead and signed by nearly all DAs, the letter expresses disappointment in Salazar, and mentions initiatives such as conviction integrity units (CIUs) and diversionary courts as evidence that “members of CDAA embrace and prioritize values of mercy, compassion, and redemption, along with our commitment to crime prevention and empathy for victims of crime, who are disproportionately people of color.” Salazar’s office confirmed that it has received the letter; the CDAA did not respond to a request for comment.

In closing ranks against Salazar, though, CDAA members also vindicated one of her points: that there’s a problem with DAs’ tendency to talk as a single political voice. 

“The CDAA represents all 58 counties, and so when they take a position the inference is that this is the voice of all 58 counties and that it is across the state of California that district attorneys are opposed to it,” Salazar told me in January. “Now, each district attorney can stay opposed, neutral, or endorse whatever bill…. But CDAA as an organization is one voice for the entire state.” 

The common inference that a DA association is reflecting the perspective of all prosecutors, no matter the actual contrasts between them, makes its statements more authoritative.

In 2018, a Political Report analysis of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association (PDAA) showed how the group’s leaders spoke in the name of prosecutors writ large, and how the coverage they received reflected that sleight of hand. That is one of the reasons Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner gave for quitting Pennsylvania’s DA association (PDAA) at the time. “The [PDAA] will not claim legitimacy of its most important criminal justice jurisdiction and try to take us back 40 years,” he said.

The sense of unanimity may be exaggerated in California as well. Lizzie Buchen, criminal justice director of the ACLU of Northern California, told me that some DAs are sympathetic to reform when they set local policies, but that when the time comes for statewide advocacy, it has been “rare for anyone to take a public position” that counters the CDAA’s stance. 

And that stance typically has been to oppose decarceral and other reform proposals. “We just expect their opposition around everything we do on criminal justice,” Buchen said. The CDAA has opposed a series of ballot initiatives this decade, including proposals to legalize pot, reduce penalties for drug offenses, and weaken three-strikes rules. It has also fought many landmark laws, such as the new restrictions to the prosecution of minors as adults.  

Still, there is no denying that California DAs were nearly unanimous in joining the Jan. 31 letter pushing back against Salazar. 

Fifty-four of the state’s 58 DAs signed it. A 55th DA, Michael Atwell of Alpine County, told me he had agreed to sign the letter and did not know why his name was missing. 

That leaves Contra Costa County’s Diana Becton and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin as the lone holdouts, besides Salazar herself. “I respect DA Salazar and her decision and the reasons for the decision,” Becton, who is known for her reform-minded politics, said in a written statement about her reaction to Salazar’s withdrawal. “I have, and will continue to partner with her to address necessary and needed changes to our criminal justice system.” Becton added that she herself has “no intention of leaving the association.” Meanwhile, Boudin’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comments on his views on Salazar and the CDAA, and on his intentions regarding his own membership in the association. 

Here the concern is less false unanimity than it is many prosecutors’ propensity to sidestep their vast policy discretion. That discretion makes their jobs thoroughly political. But faced with criticism regarding their association’s policy choices on high-profile issues—exemplified by its series of oppositions to proposed reforms through the 2010s—most DAs framed it as “a disparagement on our professional reputations.”

The CDAA, as do many other DA associations, blurs the functions of a professional membership organization and those of a policy force that advocates for a fairly consistent ideological line. 

That fosters the misleading expectation that there’s an obvious “law enforcement side” to criminal justice debates, one that flows naturally from the professional experience of being a prosecutor as opposed to representing defendants.

But that entire premise has crumbled in recent years. Activists have zeroed in on the many things DAs could do differently and have organized accordingly. Local elections have been rocked by newly contentious debates about what policies DAs should implement — whether to ever prosecute drug possession charges, and with what severity, whether or when to seek pretrial detention, and so on. Newly-elected DAs have implemented a wealth of reforms aimed at reducing incarceration. And many, like Boston’s Rachael Rollins, have clarified that confining prosecutors to represent just one side or another is unworkable.

In short, the politics of prosecution have come into view. And that has belied the convention that tough-on-crime preferences just come with the territory of being a law enforcement professional.

“The idea that DAs in California are a monolith is inaccurate,” said Anne Irwin, the director of Smart Justice California. “There should be associations that reflect different ideologies.”

Irwin thinks that progressive prosecutors should form a new organization with a distinct philosophical orientation that better reflects the goals of criminal justice reforms. They would gain more, she argues, than in breaking off by themselves. “In California, we are well-poised for an alternative DA’s association,” she said. 

Early hints of such a dynamic are percolating in Virginia, where a group of new prosecutors said last year that they wished to “band together” to push for progressive changes. This month, they signed unto a letter calling for the abolition of the death penalty. They have all remained in Virginia’s prosecutorial association, though. Similarly, reform-minded prosecutors sitting in different states are increasingly teaming up with one another to shape the national conversation, and even to intervene in local settings.

Could Los Angeles’s 2020 election spark parallel conversation around the CDAA’s fate? One candidate, George Gascón, was a CDAA member while he served as San Francisco DA. Asked for his plans if elected, he did not address whether he would stay in the association, but he said via a spokesperson that many CDAA positions “reflect dated notions of criminal justice that available data suggests do not enhance safety or equity. If CDAA does not evolve it will go extinct.”

Rachel Rossi, another candidate and a former public defender, said via a spokesperson that she “applaud[ed]” Salazar’s decision because “the CDAA has long opposed the progress and reform that California voters have supported, and has misled the public by suggesting that data-driven criminal justice reforms will harm public safety.” She added that she would first try to “reform and modernize” the CDAA from within but would “consider leaving” if “reform is continually resisted.”

But besides the feasibility of progressive candidates winning enough DA races to steer the CDAA in a different direction, why should 58 prosecutors ever all be speaking in one voice — whether that voice is for or against reform? To the extent that they are all elected, and are bound to have run on different platforms, why throw upon them an expectation of consensus that we know to not demand nor desire from other public officials?

Moreover, some voices on the left and some abolitionist advocates have demanded that progressive DAs shrink their own power and “get out of the way” for other public and community services to thrive. A still-more urgent question may be, then, how DAs can weaken the whole assumption that prosecutors should have a privileged standing to weigh in on legislative debates, and instead strengthen coalitions and associations that amp up the voices of other actors.

The post D.A. Associations Should Own Up to the Splintering Politics of Prosecution appeared first on Bolts.

San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Salazar has left the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA), a group that lobbies in the name of state DAs and that also trains prosecutors. She cited its resistance to criminal justice reform in a letter she wrote last week.

Salazar, a Republican, is the first DA to leave a statewide association on these grounds since Philadelphia’s Democratic DA Larry Krasner quit Pennsylvania’s in 2018. In California and Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the country, these groups have been powerful opponents of reforms that aim to reduce incarceration and lessen charging or sentencing levels; they frequently champion making laws more punitive. 

I talked to Salazar this week, in a Q&A interview transcribed below, about why she left the CDAA and why conventional approaches to prosecution are not working, and about a few of the policies the CDAA has fought.

“We looked at what the CDAA was doing, and we just felt that they were in opposition to almost all change that the voters of California had asked us to enact,” Salazar said. 

The CDAA opposed numerous ballot initiatives including Prop 36 (2012), which weakened the state’s three-strikes system, Prop 47 (2014), which defelonized drug possession and some theft charges, Prop 57 (2016), which expanded parole and restricted prosecutors’ broad discretion to treat minors as adults, and Prop 64 (2016), which legalized marijuana. Voters approved all four initiatives overwhelmingly, by margins ranging from 15 to 39 percentage points. Over the past two years, it has fought landmark laws that restricted the prosecution of minors as adults or created new alternatives to incarceration for parents, among others.

Salazar denounced the CDAA leadership’s refusal to draw lessons from voters’ repeated embrace of criminal justice reform at the ballot box. “Instead of looking at it as an opportunity, they looked at it as opposition,” she said.

The CDAA’s board of directors, which sets the association’s stance, features just a fraction of the state’s prosecutors. But as long as the CDAA represents all 58 counties, Salazar said, the “inference” is that “it is across the state of California that district attorneys are opposed” to reform.

By contrast, her departure could puncture the premise, often reflected in media coverage, that a state association reflects the unified voice of law enforcement, and it could bring into sharper relief the growing political contrasts between prosecutors. Other DAs “are going to probably come out” as well, she said.

Salazar described recent popular initiatives as a wake-up call for her own thinking. “It forced us to look at ourselves, accept responsibility,” she said, explaining that it compelled her to reckon with voters’ dissatisfaction with punitive policies, reassess assumptions she was trained in, and shed “old theories that didn’t hold true” about what boosts safety. Conventional practices have spread “generational harm,” she said. Asked about the state’s recent restrictions on three-strikes sentences and felony murder prosecutions, Salazar offered similar responses. She did not embrace reform on either issue, though she acknowledged that the thinking that led California to adopt these schemes is in question.

Voters “had the courage to push us and now we have to have the courage to deliver,” she said. “They’re asking to have the courage to think outside the box to find better pathways for people to be successful, and to heal your community. So why not lean into that and figure out what works and what doesn’t work?”

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

–—

Why did you choose to leave the CDAA? In a letter, you stated that “the association is out of touch and unwilling to find new approaches to criminal justice.” What did you mean by that, and why did that lead you to leave the group?

We looked at what the CDAA was doing, and we just felt that they were in opposition to almost all change that the voters of California had asked us to enact. [Voters] spoke and said, “We want to see some changes. We don’t believe the system is as effective and as efficient as it could be.” At first, I have to say, you’re like, “Wait, what? What’s going on here?” And then you stop to think about it, and you think, “Okay, let’s listen, let’s work, let’s think about what we’re doing, and can we be doing it better and more efficiently?” 

In large part because of the high volume work everybody’s doing, we weren’t stepping back and saying, “Are we increasing public safety? Are we doing work to prevent harm in our community? Are we creating a healthy community?” So we listened to what the voters had to say. We implemented the changes that they wanted and that they demanded of us by putting it to a vote. I felt that there was an opportunity for us to engage with our communities to hear their voice about wanting criminal justice reform. 

Throughout, I didn’t see the CDAA really engaging in that change. Instead of looking at it as an opportunity, they looked at it as opposition. And I think it was more valuable to look at it as an opportunity. When I stepped back from it, there really wasn’t a service being provided that was representative of what we were doing here in San Joaquin County. And at that point, I decided to no longer be a member. 

From what you’re saying, it sounds like the success of some of these initiatives, and perhaps the organizing around them, changed your own thinking. Is that right? Have you rethought your views and role in response to the success of these popular initiatives?

Yes, I think most DAs have had an evolution. We were all trained and brought up in one way, and that this way worked. But in reality, when we went back and we looked at it, we saw a number of problems. 

Laws were implemented in a racially discriminatory manner. I’m sure that wasn’t anybody’s intent, but that’s how they worked out. You have to take ownership and responsibility for that. 

We saw that we were not communicating well with our communities and building trust and transparency, and that’s why we had a lot of victims and witnesses who didn’t want to cooperate with us. 

We saw a lot of people suffering generational harm, driving them into poverty. Just coming into the criminal justice system is very expensive. And so what were we really driving? Were we really deterring the crime from occurring, or were we driving more people into poverty where we create generational harm, where people could not get jobs because of that past felony conviction? They’re going to get paid under the table. They’re not gonna pay into Social Security or retirement. You’re just creating the cycle of generational poverty. And then, how do you balance that with holding people accountable for the actions they’ve taken? 

So we stepped back and heard what the people were saying, and we said, “Okay, we understand that you’re not happy with the way things are going. We understand that you want to see change. And thank you, because we didn’t look at it that way. And now we do look at it differently.” Even though these changes were first a little bit shocking, we just weren’t used to change. They’ve actually been a tremendous opportunity. It forced us to look at ourselves — accept responsibility.

They had the courage to push us and now we have to have the courage to deliver. 

And I think the CDAA wasn’t delivering. They were hoping that things would revert back to the way it was. I think that that didn’t serve them well. It left them behind on the reforms. It didn’t increase public safety. It created a lot of frustration, and missed messaging and opportunities to really engage our communities. They’re asking to have the courage to think outside the box to find better pathways for people to be successful, and to heal your community. So why not lean into that and figure out what works and what doesn’t work?

Some DAs now do push for more reform-oriented policies, and yet the CDAA has had a pretty consistent record of opposing reforms. Can you spell out how you see the CDAA operating in a way that produces that consistent position, as opposed to making it possible for people who have different views to influence what the CDAA position is?

The CDAA represents all 58 counties, and so when they take a position the inference is that this is the voice of all 58 counties and that it is across the state of California that district attorneys are opposed to it. Now, each district attorney can stay opposed, neutral, or endorse whatever bill that they’re putting forward. But CDAA as an organization is one voice for the entire state.

But what we found is that not every voice was being heard. The voice was the old voice. There weren’t opportunities to learn and gain from working with these changes to the law. We saw a CDAA not listening to the people. In most cases, instead of seeing an opportunity, they went with the opposition. I think taking that stance has further alienated the people we serve, and has made it seem that the conversation is only about “light on crime” or “tough on crime.” And that’s not what reform is. Reform is victim-centric. It’s still ensuring public safety and the well-being of everybody in our community. The core of reform is public safety. What it does is it says, “Let’s be smart about this. Let’s look at the totality.” 

I’ll give you an example. We have a domestic violence program for misdemeanors, a 52-week program. I fought for this because we believed that the 52-week program was better than the 16-week program. But the program runs almost $2,000. Most of my community can’t afford it, to even go there. What happens is they get referred, they go until they can, and then they can’t go anymore because they can’t afford to go, and then they get a violation and they come back in. So we’re just turning the system over and over and over, and in the meantime, 80 percent of them are back home with their family and they’re not getting any better. It was a program that we believed in because we thought more was better, but the reality is it really wasn’t working.

We need to have this conversation without being labeled one thing or another. These are complex, difficult, time-consuming, expensive, emotional, traumatic, life-and-death decisions. And we need to be able to have that conversation with our community. Let’s look at what we’re doing. Let’s accept responsibility for the mistakes we’ve made. Let’s own up to it. And let’s build a criminal justice system that we’re proud of, not one that is based on old theories that didn’t hold true. What we do is say, “If your issues are driven by mental health or substance abuse disorder, which affect every family in America, then we need to get you into the services to get you well.” If you’re a driver of violence or harm, harming children or shootings or homicides, then we’re going to come and we are going to bring everything we have. Because we have the resources now, because we’re not spread so thin with cases that really aren’t criminal justice-driven and more societal. 

What do you think should be next as an alternative to the CDAA? Are you aware of other DAs who are considering following you, and whether or not that happens, is there another form of partnership with other DAs that you believe would better support voters’ initiatives?

I think more DAs are going to think about their decisions more closely and differentiate between their decision of what’s best for their county and what the CDAA is recommending. I hope more voices will be raised. 

Some people are going to say, “Let’s create change from within.” Some are going to probably come out and create the change from outside. I respect whichever way people want to go.

Are you afraid of losing something by leaving the CDAA, whether in terms of partnerships, training, access to databases?

No. I don’t see that as a concern. The information they have is pretty much public record, and I don’t think they wouldn’t be willing to share it. I don’t see that as a loss for me. 

I’d like to delve into specific reforms that the CDAA opposed. Prop 36 restricted California’s expansive “three-strike” policy in 2012; in 2014, Prop 47 lowered sentencing for drug possession and some theft charges. The CDAA fought both initiatives. What do you think their impact has been? And what other sentencing reforms would you support to build on them?

Prop 47 and 64, the parts that have allowed us to clean up people’s past criminal histories, are driving more people to traditional employment. That’s going to help our economy. You can break that generational poverty and start stabilizing some of the homes. 

We would like to see the opportunity to seal records because expungement doesn’t really provide the pathway to success that people think it does. And I know that there’s new legislation now in the beginning of the year that will help steal some of those records. But those who committed low-to-moderate offenses, when you’ve completed your sentence, it should just be an automatic seal on those cases. It’s acknowledging and recognizing you for doing the right thing: Everybody can fall down, and if you pick yourself up and you’ve done everything right, why do I call you a felon for the rest of your life, same as the person who’s killed 30 women? 

The other side of 47 is that all thefts under $950 are misdemeanors. Now that part needs to be modified. We made a mistake in the past where maybe we were overcharging petty theft, when people were really hungry and they were homeless and they needed help. They didn’t need the criminal justice system, and incarcerating them for two or three days wasn’t going to change the fact that they’re homeless. It’s probably going to exacerbate that. But what we saw instead was people coming in who are very organized. [Prop 47] doesn’t give us a lot of tools to address these individuals, other than continually doing misdemeanor after misdemeanor after misdemeanor. We shouldn’t have been charging people who are hungry and poor and homeless. But we also have to have a tool to take on sophisticated, organized crime. 

In the spirit of Prop 36, would you favor further rolling back the three-strikes system? 

I haven’t looked at 36 in a while. I can understand why people came to three strikes because they were frustrated with the criminal justice system and they wanted to find a different way. What we need is really get to what the intent was. I understand why they are afraid, and I respect that, but we didn’t sit down and have a really good conversation about, “Okay, when we have this kind of extreme violence, how do we address it? What do we do, and how do we make it work? And if we’re going to take on measures like this, are we doing data collection to prove that it does, and is it driving the results that we expected?” There was a time where we used three strikes quite a bit; we don’t use it very much now because it wasn’t driving the results that we thought it would drive. 

Perhaps the biggest recent fight between the CDAA and lawmakers has been over Senate Bill 1437, which restricted felony murder statutes. Many California DAs have fought this and sued over the law. The law provides for the resentencing of people who have been convicted under the felony murder rules. Do you support that bill, and the resentencing it sets up?

People were frustrated and wanted to hold everybody accountable and responsible, and I understand why people felt that way. We all feel that way when you feel you’re not safe in your community. You want something and you want it to be strong. That’s what we all grew up in: They do harm, we do harm. — that kind of mentality. In reality, we need to slow down and say, “What is it that we want?” We want a safer community, and we implemented the felony murder rule, but what did it do? Did it serve the purpose that we want? Did it achieve the results that we wanted? And did we implement it fair across the board? Did we use it in a manner that ensured public safety? That’s where we got to go back and look at felony murder, and look at if it achieved what we wanted to achieve. If it did, then OK, but if it didn’t, how do we make it better? That’s really what they said in [SB] 1437, is go back and look at those cases, and figure out, did we do it right or did we not? And if you didn’t, you need to correct it.

We need to start having this conversation with the community because there are people that are going to come back out, and we have to explain why they’re coming back, but also while we have them there, we need to be working within the prison system to make sure that we’re getting every rehabilitative tool possible. 

The post California Prosecutor Quits D.A. Association: “Let’s Accept Responsibility for The Mistakes We’ve Made” appeared first on Bolts.