LA DA’s race at center of ‘progressive prosecution’ debate

Some district attorneys across the nation are taking a "progression prosecution" approach to crime by offering lesser sentences and more lenient punishments for certain crimes. Some call the movement smart, others call it soft, but one thing is clear: The district attorney's race in Los Angeles County has become center stage for the debate.

With the elections of Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins in Massachusetts, Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence S. Krasner, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and others, the "progressive prosecution" movement is growing.

"I chose to run for DA because this is a growing movement and because I recognized we are in a unique historic moment," Boudin said in a phone interview Monday. "This is the first time in any of our lifetimes when there is a broad national consensus. Even many Republicans are on board with the need to move away from the failed 'tough on crime' policies that have resulted in the highest incarceration rates in the history of the world, the most bloated prison budgets and which have had no measurable impact on crime statistics or public safety."

However as this wave hits the Los Angeles County district attorney race via challenger George Gascón, who has received many progressive endorsements, critics have become increasingly vocal, not only in their support for incumbent District Attorney Jackie Lacey but in their criticism of the movement as a whole.

One of those critics is the Los Angeles County Association of Deputy District Attorneys president Michele Hanisee.

"I've been involved in this debate for a while and two of the things that are constantly cited to are the high incarceration rates ... and that crime is at an all-time low, a 20 to 25-year low. And it never seems to occur to anyone that maybe crime is low because incarceration rates are high," Hanisee said in a phone interview Tuesday.

"The problem with going off on an experiment with public safety -- which is what you are doing when you change things without knowing how they work -- is that real people, real victims will pay the price," Hanisee said. "Not just stolen purse and auto burglaries but also violent crime... This is not an area where you want to wing it and see what happens. The consequences are too severe."

One of the policies critics like Hanisee have focused on is California's Proposition 47, also known as,the "Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative."

The initiative passed by voters in 2014 reduced the classification of most property and drug crimes the legislation defines as non-violent -- including theft and fraud for amounts up to $950 -- from a felony to a misdemeanor. It was co-authored by Gascón.

The problem, Hanisee said, with policies that favor lesser sentences and rehabilitation, is they have only been marginally successful "and that would be generous."

"The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, before Prop. 47 and 57 and after 47 and 57, continues to have an approximately 50% recidivism rate," she said. "Those are people who have been released from state prison, on parole, been to prison, been through programming. And half of them return to prison within three years. That's not successful at all."

Gascón, like other progressive prosecutors, said he believes in "smart on crime" policies he says are based on science and data and not the "tough on crime" policies which tend toward longer jail sentences and are ineffective.

"This is a movement built on science and data that suggests the tough-on-crime approach is not only plagued with inequities, it also devastated budgets and failed to make us safer," Gascón said in an email Monday. "Los Angeles is a perfect example. The district attorney sends people to state prison at four times the rate of San Francisco, and yet during her tenure violent crime went up 30% in LA County and 55% in LA City, while it went down in San Francisco. Tough-on-crime tactics enable politicians to talk tough, but they don't enhance the health and safety of our communities."

Neither Lacey's office nor her campaign were available to comment for this article.

Rollins said like San Francisco, the municipal and district courts in her city, Boston, where less serious crimes are prosecuted, see offenders who have come in contact with the criminal justice system mainly as a result of suffering from undiagnosed or untreated substance abuse and mental illness. She said more jail time is not always the answer.

"I'd rather get them treatment and a bed than have the taxpayers pay $55,000 a year to house them in the Suffolk County House of Corrections," Rollins said. "Our jails are our new asylums. These are societal failures. With violent crimes it's a little different. With many of the nonviolent, non-serious crimes, I believe we are not doing the right thing for our community by incarcerating everyone rather than getting them treatment."

However Officer Jamie McBride, director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said by reducing certain crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, offenders are actually less likely to seek treatment. He said when a criminal is convicted with a misdemeanor, they are typically given sentences which include time served and the option to participate in a drug treatment program, which many choose not to participate in.

When the crime is a felony, he said, the offender is more likely to take the treatment than the certain jail time, he said."All of these law changes that are softening all these crimes like the drug crimes, that comes from this progressive DA reformer style." he added. "They talk about mass incarceration putting people in cages. Well I don't know about you, but California doesn't look good with what is going on and I'm sick and tired of it."

Another critic of the progressive prosecution movement is former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. He said Gascón's policies have made the streets of San Francisco dirtier and more dangerous. "It's a mess and it's getting messier with this Boudin guy," he said in a phone interview Monday.

Former San Francisco County District Attorney George Gascon (New York Times News Service)

"When Gascón announced for the LA DA's race, the police department issued a press release which was very simple and very straightforward: 'We hope and pray that George Gascón does not do to Los Angeles what he did to San Francisco as DA," Cooley said. "If you want to change the law become a legislator, don't become a DA. Prosecutors follow the law as written. This guy [Gascón] is no prosecutor but wants to impose his view of the world on LA County. If LA County falls for it, shame on them and they will suffer from serious crime."

Responding to criticism Monday, Boudin said there is no evidence to support the notion that the progressive prosecution approach will make districts more unsafe.

"No one ever asked proponents of the death penalty, or life without parole or three strikes or any other of the so-called, 'tough on crime' policies to show that they make us safer and there is no evidence that they do," Boudin said. "To the contrary, my policies will be driven by data and ensure that our policy will make us safer and we will hold ourselves accountable to the outcomes those policies engender, something the tough-on-crime movement has never done."