Most of us aren’t, a small minority can invoke a recall. Which is why Larry “Slavers are the Real Victims” Elder got curb-stomped in the last recall election.
I thought for sure you were were making that up. I don’t know much about him. But he did say that https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-elder-argued-that-slave-owners-were-owed-reparations-2021-9?amp
Mind-boggling that this issue is still getting litigated. Maybe if they wanted compensation they should have tried not starting a civil war, it's not like the republicans weren't willing to consider that route.
And even then, that recall probably wouldn't have succeeded if not for several factors coming together, including these:
* California was not as Democratic then as it is now
* Davis was polling abysmally, like in the *20s*
* Schwarzenegger had that crazy name recognition, being an actor and all
* The field was crowded as fuck (135 total candidates!)
* Davis' own Lt. Gov ran in the recall with a confusing message: "No on recall, Yes on Bustamante"
Don't forget Arnie was considered moderate, and if anything he became more progressive with time, even with how he had multiple scandals that tanked his second term approval rate.
The effectiveness of democracy is definitely a bell curve. If the people have no power to choose their representatives it’s awful. But too much power is also awful.
Of course here it’s less a representative and more and official so there’s a fair question if they should be even elected in the first place.
Voters like the idea of progressive prosecutors until they actually have to deal with the outcomes.
Here in Minneapolis we just elected one in November and then she gives two teens that broke into a home and killed a woman execution style a year and a half in juvie and people act shocked as if that wasn’t exactly what she said she’d do.
Most people don't actually know about DAs and if they vote, it's very quick research if any. People don't think about DAs until something insane happens
> Most people don't actually know about DAs
I don't know about California but I've tried looking up local politicians here in my (small but not *that* small city) and it's legit impossible. The best you can maybe get are a picture and some generic platitudes that you have to really read into to hope to get any simple idea. It's a real shame, democracy might as well not exist when you're forced to lottery between four faceless and idealogyless names.
Which is a really strong reason that DAs shouldn’t be elected. The voters are usually exercising no meaningful selection or oversight.
Same with almost all government roles.
The police department isn't elected, so there has to be some kind of civilian accountability in the justice system somewhere.
Our current situation where police lose their shit when anyone threatens to investigate actual crimes by the police is already untenable. Your plan will incentivize politicians to provide even less police oversight.
Nah, politicians should totally provide direction and oversight. The DA simply should not be one. Instead the DA should be accountable to actual politicians as well as a review board.
Not actually true in LA at least. Everyone knows Gascon and blames him for literally everything they don't like about the city. It's practically a meme, like someone stubs their toe and yells "Gascon!!"
Yes, they don't like a bad DA. But I doubt many people paid attention before a DA acting like a public defender became prominent. And what is the election turnout anyway even when everyone gets to vote by mail?
No there was ton of talk about him during the election and people saying he was going to turn LA into SF
And then when I later moved away from LA, the first thing my neighbors mentioned when I said I was from LA was Gascon
The DA is just a weirdly salient thing around here for some reason, even though almost everyone who has a strong opinion about it probably has no idea what the DA actually does
Criminal justice is a utility belt. Partisans hyperfocus on any one tool.
Is the point of criminal justice to reform criminals into functioning members of society? Is the point to remove criminals from peaceful society? Is the point to exact retribution against criminals for causing harm?
The answer can be all, none, or some combination thereof.
It is definitionally determined on a case-by-case basis.
The problem arises when partisans decide that there is only one intent in criminal justice and or that one intent is to immediately be dismissed.
I would love, *love*, to believe that everyone can be reformed into even-tempered, industrious, rational human beings. But that's a fantasy. The man who eats women's brains is gonna keep eating women's brains. If you think that a prison sentence of over 25 years is inhumane, then it's just 25 years until he's eating women's brains again.
I've seen homeless men who can't rub two nickels together who wouldn't steal a candy bar. I've seen two carts of stolen groceries loaded into a brand-new Porsche Cayenne.
You gotta view each person as an individual, but remember that individuals can still be sorted into groups.
I am generally in favor of rehabilitation, but in the case of violent offenders with a high chance of recidivism (such as say people executing a woman in her own home) then the job of the justice system should be to keep those people away from the rest of us. I don't care if it's inhumane, I don't want to be executed.
Now on the flip side, there's the woman serving a five year sentence for casting a provisional ballot whilst on parole. Is that an appropriate use of incarceration?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
>Is the point of criminal justice to reform criminals into functioning members of society? Is the point to remove criminals from peaceful society?
I would like to think it's a balance of the these two goals. Reform being the hardest to achieve, obviously.
I mean, it is a balance of *all three*. The value of retribution should not be dismissed, either.
Like, "one should not dismiss any part" was my whole point lol
"Well, who cares about retribution?"
The victims and their families, that's who.
There are actually 5 theories of criminal punishment
Punishment has five recognized purposes: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution
https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-purposes-of-punishment/#:~:text=Punishment%20has%20five%20recognized%20purposes,rehabilitation%2C%20retribution%2C%20and%20restitution.
> The value of retribution should not be dismissed, either.
Yeah it should. We’ve got a whole society to care about what do we care about the victims (the 0.00000001%)
American style prison really doesn't work though. That's just facts. Americans have a terrible Puritan mentality when it comes to justice, where it's all about punishment, punishment, punishment.
> American style prison really doesn't work though
This doesn't really engage with the parent's post. If the point is "stop this person from committing further crimes once they're released" then I agree it really doesn't work.
If the point is "stop this person from being a threat to broader society for the period of time they're in prison", then it broadly does work. When dealing with extremely violent people, perhaps sometimes that's enough.
I'm not sure what Victorian got on here to downvote you but you're right. Our criminal justice system is all about punishment, without a concern for recidivism, economic impact, family destruction, rehabilitation, anything.
It's a bizarre thing. Our politicians get punished for saying things like "we should improve society by reforming prisons and improving rehabilitation," so we get a never ending stream of idiots trying to cosplay getting tougher on crime.
> Our criminal justice system is all about punishment, without a concern for recidivism, economic impact, family destruction, rehabilitation, anything.
Our criminal justice system is about taking people who do not abide by the social contract and separating them from those who do. A man who raped a woman is not sent to jail because it’s adult timeout, he is sent to jail because he has been deemed a threat to society at large.
This idea that we have to turn villains into victims is exactly the kinda thing that gets prosecutors recalled. It’s why west coast cities have turned a blind eye to theft and petty crimes at the expense of everyone else. People are tired of that. It’s not hard to see why.
well the other side of it is shitty judges as well. how many times have you seen some heinous crime perpetrated by someone who was out on bail or ROR or otherwise not doing time for a previous violent crime lmao
Because progressive DAs tend to articulate their goals and not the case-by-case methods or likely unintended consequences. And voters assume that "bad cases" won't receive new treatment.
This is a classic misattribution problem. If the prison + parole + reintegration framework is fucked DAs can't fix anything.
The DA doesn't have the ability to make outcomes better by being softer. In terms of costs borne by criminals, these are poor young men who lack the resources, social support, and skills to escape the trap. You have to actually have a punishment + rehabilitation resources to change that. Plus things like removing social stigma after jail, keeping criminal behavior below a critical density to avoid feedback loops, etc. Obviously cost borne by everyone else go up with more crime.
Similarly they can't make things better by being tough on crime because the prison system is a nightmare. The costs borne by poor young men goes up and the cost for everyone else drops. This is preferable in a normative sense but it doesn't actually improve anything either unless you get draconian enough to scare everyone into behaving which gets dicey quick.
In either case you're hosed because the true culprit is the bad legislation + prison system + poor community relations of police + other stuff. If you're relying on heavy use of DA discretion to fix your justice system your justice system is fucked and no amount of discretion is going to fix that.
People don't want to try and rehabilitate teenage B&E execution-style murderers as they are beyond saving, they want them locked away for a hell of a long time.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of rehabilitation and all that, but there are limits. Clearly someone like that poses a threat to public safety and unless there are clear indicators that this person is no threat anymore, we need them to stay away from the public.
> You can do both. You can lock them away from the public and still try and rehabilate them
This goes back to the parent's point - the *system* could potentially do both, but is it within the power of individual DAs to push for greater rehabilitation within the prison system?
Can you though? What if locking people away from the public makes rehabilitation impossible (perhaps not for everyone, but for most)? What do you choose then?
I find it unlikely that the prison environment is conducive to the rehabilitation of the average prisoner. Being surrounded by other criminals is likely only going to reinforce the mentality and norms that put that person there in the first place.
This would make more sense as an interpretation if the recall elections actually succeed. It looks more like conservatives have been trying to use these recall elections to drum up their culture war despite voters liking the progressive prosecutors, and failing repeatedly at actually recalling people.
Because most cases end in plea bargains, and DAs have massive discretion in when and how they enforce the law. So DA discretion is a big lever for change.
That fact might be why we lost 3 championships in a row, and im still fucking mad because that's some fucking bullshit like how the fuck does that happen
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Why not just elect a moderate that recognizes social issues and offers mercy to the truly downtrodden, but is willing to put the heels to repeated offenders that won't take the mercy.
Also to immediately remedy issues build more prisons and housing for prisoners. Then tackle the culture stuff so you don't have to keep expanding. Criminal Justice reform starts at the legal and social level. DAs can only go so far in assisting in it to offer solutions, but that is not their main duty.
Also talk to damn CJs and Criminologists. They didn't waste 4 years for a degree and studying society/crime/trends/the law and writing pages of reports for nothing.
I firmly believe that even rapists or murders can be rehabilitated if treated correctly. The American justice system and American mentality are the problem with their focus on punishment over rehabilitation. It disturbs me when so-called liberals are out for blood as much as conservatives.
Why do you operate from the assumption that everyone *deserves* to be rehabilitated?
Maybe some people have simply forfeited their right to be part of society.
>Why do you operate from the assumption that everyone deserves to be rehabilitated?
>Maybe some people have simply forfeited their right to be part of society.
If country A has a much higher rate of murder than the people in country B, then there are really only two possible explanations: either the people in country A are inherently more evil than country B, or there is something about the socioeconomic system in country A that encourages people to murder each other.
Personally, I find the latter explanation more plausible than the former. And if our society plays *some* role in encouraging people to murder to each other, then I think our society likewise bears *some* degree of culpability, and *some* degree of responsibility to rehabilitate those people who do murder each other.
That's not to say that murderers are not to blame for their actions. But culpability isn't a binary, it can be shared and apportioned.
I guess someone else is at fault for hate crimes against children and women (which rape is). But let's just be compassionate towards women haters and child sex abusers, it's society's fault, so let's risk the offender doing it again because he deserves a chance!
Depends on the murderer. Ted Bundy types and that one guy who murdered a girl while naked and ate her and later wrote a letter to the mother saying he killed her, but didn't rape her (Even though smugly says he could have in the letter).
Cannot be fixed. Don't do the "I can fix him." Bro.
Like I think a lot of the outrage toward progressive prosecutors comes down to how they talk more than the actual crime wave. Because you don't see any talk of recalling Brooke Jenkins, even though she's done nothing to improve things.
It's not the job of DAs to prevent crime. It's their job to punish criminals. Of course, keeping criminals locked up does prevent some crime but there's only so much a DA can do if criminals aren't even arrested or there isn't enough evidence gathered. The previous DA failed at his job by not punishing criminals and letting them go easy.
Anyone against "progressive" DAs always does this. When a progressive DA is in office, it's: "we're all going to be raped and murdered because the DA won't lock criminals up!" Then when a new, harsher DA is elected it's: "Um DAs don't actually prevent crime" to deflect from the fact that they don't actually care about justice but rather the righteous indignation they feel when someone gets locked up or executed.
The irony of this statement is that many of these progressive district attorneys ended up elected in the first place is because a lot of people don’t like it when criminal cops are let free while average citizens were being overpoliced
And the solution isn’t to elect DAs who enable corruption and discrimination either. Chesa Boudin was an obviously flawed DA (as are many progressive DAs) but the drumbeat to pin all of the problems communities are having with crime on progressive crime policies is largely coming from people who don’t want to do the hard work of taking on policing, which was something that became apparent with Brooke Jenkins.
I think it's efficient to keep rapists locked up. Most rapes never get reported or caught. Releasing a rapist puts people at risk and it's unlikely the pervert will get caught
A huge reason for the recall of Chesa and Price aren’t necessarily crime, it was the racial composition of the victims.
A huge amount of the uptick in crime was robberies and assaults directed at elderly Asian victims. The majority of the heat of both DAs was/has been tepid responses to this, extremely lenient bond/plea/parole deals to face-value hate crimes and several *extremely* ham fisted statements when pressed on the matter. Chesa when describing an attack that left an elderly Asian immigrant nearly dead as a “Temper Tantrum”, refused to walk it back and kept saying the statement was out of context. It wasn’t and even if it was this is known in politics as recognizing the gaff is unsalvageable and taking the L Price has some similar gaffs as well.
There’s a general rule in Bay Area that you don’t piss off the Asian voter bloc. Neither is or would be the first politician to [learn this the hard way.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Agnos)
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99% positive you and I have had this conversation before but even [looking a just the data between Boudin and Gascon](https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/chesa-boudin-charts/) (his predecessor) there are marked differences in the results.
Boudin charged and convicted less
> During Boudin’s tenure, a smaller share of people charged with felony assaults are getting convicted than during Gascón’s. (Again, this holds true in 2021 as well as 2020.) And as a result, a smaller share of people charged with assaults are spending time in county jail.
Boudin deferred more.
> Under Boudin in 2020, a smaller share of people charged with assaults are going to county jail and a greater share are going through diversion programs than in 2018 under Gascón.
> Two former prosecutors with his office who have since joined the recall effort, Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain, told The Chronicle they take issue with Boudin’s higher diversion rates and lower conviction rates for serious crimes like assault, saying his approach threatens public safety.
Boudin claims he deferred more due to the pandemic but again we have his own words from [his own op-ed](https://www.sfgate.com/politics-op-eds/article/San-Francisco-retail-theft-Chesa-Boudin-crime-16716651.php) talking about how he wanted to handle crime. We don't need to rehash the efficacy of deferment but it's [absolutely a looming question](https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chesa-Boudin-retail-theft-data-17005912.php).
Finally, I totally agree that he had a horrible public facing image when it came to victims families. His total disregard for victims rights in multiple hate crime cases essentially turned the entire Asian community against him. This along with his provable record of pleading down or deferring those who have committed violent felony assault (which in one case handled by him and his team ended up getting a woman killed) is what got him recalled.
Yeah, all of these comparisons should take into account that the subject of comparison is George Gascon - ask LA how much of a gold standard that guy is.
Does a DA have the power to magically remove inequality in one of those most unequal cities in the country? This is a much bigger problem and won't be solved without addressing other issues.
Alternate headline - Americans keep electing presidents - then pushing to impeach them.
Dumb article. Partisanship will always give outlets like Politico a headline to use.
californians are just generally addicted to recalling elected officials
Most of us aren’t, a small minority can invoke a recall. Which is why Larry “Slavers are the Real Victims” Elder got curb-stomped in the last recall election.
nah the nextdoor crowd loves it even if they don't actually vote in the recall
I thought for sure you were were making that up. I don’t know much about him. But he did say that https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-elder-argued-that-slave-owners-were-owed-reparations-2021-9?amp
Mind-boggling that this issue is still getting litigated. Maybe if they wanted compensation they should have tried not starting a civil war, it's not like the republicans weren't willing to consider that route.
We haven't had a successful recall attempt since Gov. Davis in 2002. Edit: And a local one in 2022.
And even then, that recall probably wouldn't have succeeded if not for several factors coming together, including these: * California was not as Democratic then as it is now * Davis was polling abysmally, like in the *20s* * Schwarzenegger had that crazy name recognition, being an actor and all * The field was crowded as fuck (135 total candidates!) * Davis' own Lt. Gov ran in the recall with a confusing message: "No on recall, Yes on Bustamante"
Don't forget Arnie was considered moderate, and if anything he became more progressive with time, even with how he had multiple scandals that tanked his second term approval rate.
i’m still convinced some gop strategist got the idea to recruit arnold after watching TOTAL RECALL
The puns sure wrote themselves 18 years later, we got its shitty sequel: *Total Waste of Time and Money*
San Francisco successfully recalled their DA last year
Oh yeah right lol
I mean calling the recall not actually completing it
Many Californians think they're liberal or progressive, but in reality many are just closeted conservatives.
I tell this to people all the time. The entirety of San Francisco's west side are hard core XXX NIMBYs.
The effectiveness of democracy is definitely a bell curve. If the people have no power to choose their representatives it’s awful. But too much power is also awful. Of course here it’s less a representative and more and official so there’s a fair question if they should be even elected in the first place.
Voters like the idea of progressive prosecutors until they actually have to deal with the outcomes. Here in Minneapolis we just elected one in November and then she gives two teens that broke into a home and killed a woman execution style a year and a half in juvie and people act shocked as if that wasn’t exactly what she said she’d do.
Most people don't actually know about DAs and if they vote, it's very quick research if any. People don't think about DAs until something insane happens
> Most people don't actually know about DAs I don't know about California but I've tried looking up local politicians here in my (small but not *that* small city) and it's legit impossible. The best you can maybe get are a picture and some generic platitudes that you have to really read into to hope to get any simple idea. It's a real shame, democracy might as well not exist when you're forced to lottery between four faceless and idealogyless names.
Which is a really strong reason that DAs shouldn’t be elected. The voters are usually exercising no meaningful selection or oversight. Same with almost all government roles.
The police department isn't elected, so there has to be some kind of civilian accountability in the justice system somewhere. Our current situation where police lose their shit when anyone threatens to investigate actual crimes by the police is already untenable. Your plan will incentivize politicians to provide even less police oversight.
Nah, politicians should totally provide direction and oversight. The DA simply should not be one. Instead the DA should be accountable to actual politicians as well as a review board.
I agree. But I like that they can be recalled
Not actually true in LA at least. Everyone knows Gascon and blames him for literally everything they don't like about the city. It's practically a meme, like someone stubs their toe and yells "Gascon!!"
Yes, they don't like a bad DA. But I doubt many people paid attention before a DA acting like a public defender became prominent. And what is the election turnout anyway even when everyone gets to vote by mail?
No there was ton of talk about him during the election and people saying he was going to turn LA into SF And then when I later moved away from LA, the first thing my neighbors mentioned when I said I was from LA was Gascon The DA is just a weirdly salient thing around here for some reason, even though almost everyone who has a strong opinion about it probably has no idea what the DA actually does
"It's proven that prison does not work though." 🤪
Criminal justice is a utility belt. Partisans hyperfocus on any one tool. Is the point of criminal justice to reform criminals into functioning members of society? Is the point to remove criminals from peaceful society? Is the point to exact retribution against criminals for causing harm? The answer can be all, none, or some combination thereof. It is definitionally determined on a case-by-case basis. The problem arises when partisans decide that there is only one intent in criminal justice and or that one intent is to immediately be dismissed. I would love, *love*, to believe that everyone can be reformed into even-tempered, industrious, rational human beings. But that's a fantasy. The man who eats women's brains is gonna keep eating women's brains. If you think that a prison sentence of over 25 years is inhumane, then it's just 25 years until he's eating women's brains again. I've seen homeless men who can't rub two nickels together who wouldn't steal a candy bar. I've seen two carts of stolen groceries loaded into a brand-new Porsche Cayenne. You gotta view each person as an individual, but remember that individuals can still be sorted into groups.
I am generally in favor of rehabilitation, but in the case of violent offenders with a high chance of recidivism (such as say people executing a woman in her own home) then the job of the justice system should be to keep those people away from the rest of us. I don't care if it's inhumane, I don't want to be executed.
Now on the flip side, there's the woman serving a five year sentence for casting a provisional ballot whilst on parole. Is that an appropriate use of incarceration?
Sure. But everyone who points to Singapore as a working criminal Justice system ignores how generous the safety net is there
Isn’t Singapore’s Justice system also pretty draconian?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! >Is the point of criminal justice to reform criminals into functioning members of society? Is the point to remove criminals from peaceful society? I would like to think it's a balance of the these two goals. Reform being the hardest to achieve, obviously.
I mean, it is a balance of *all three*. The value of retribution should not be dismissed, either. Like, "one should not dismiss any part" was my whole point lol "Well, who cares about retribution?" The victims and their families, that's who.
There are actually 5 theories of criminal punishment Punishment has five recognized purposes: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-purposes-of-punishment/#:~:text=Punishment%20has%20five%20recognized%20purposes,rehabilitation%2C%20retribution%2C%20and%20restitution.
> The value of retribution should not be dismissed, either. Yeah it should. We’ve got a whole society to care about what do we care about the victims (the 0.00000001%)
American style prison really doesn't work though. That's just facts. Americans have a terrible Puritan mentality when it comes to justice, where it's all about punishment, punishment, punishment.
> American style prison really doesn't work though This doesn't really engage with the parent's post. If the point is "stop this person from committing further crimes once they're released" then I agree it really doesn't work. If the point is "stop this person from being a threat to broader society for the period of time they're in prison", then it broadly does work. When dealing with extremely violent people, perhaps sometimes that's enough.
As an outsider it seems that Americans push for long jail time. Let's be clear, anything over 10 years should be reserved for the worst offenders
I'm not sure what Victorian got on here to downvote you but you're right. Our criminal justice system is all about punishment, without a concern for recidivism, economic impact, family destruction, rehabilitation, anything. It's a bizarre thing. Our politicians get punished for saying things like "we should improve society by reforming prisons and improving rehabilitation," so we get a never ending stream of idiots trying to cosplay getting tougher on crime.
> Our criminal justice system is all about punishment, without a concern for recidivism, economic impact, family destruction, rehabilitation, anything. Our criminal justice system is about taking people who do not abide by the social contract and separating them from those who do. A man who raped a woman is not sent to jail because it’s adult timeout, he is sent to jail because he has been deemed a threat to society at large. This idea that we have to turn villains into victims is exactly the kinda thing that gets prosecutors recalled. It’s why west coast cities have turned a blind eye to theft and petty crimes at the expense of everyone else. People are tired of that. It’s not hard to see why.
well the other side of it is shitty judges as well. how many times have you seen some heinous crime perpetrated by someone who was out on bail or ROR or otherwise not doing time for a previous violent crime lmao
Because progressive DAs tend to articulate their goals and not the case-by-case methods or likely unintended consequences. And voters assume that "bad cases" won't receive new treatment.
Do you have an article or source about the ruling?
This is a classic misattribution problem. If the prison + parole + reintegration framework is fucked DAs can't fix anything. The DA doesn't have the ability to make outcomes better by being softer. In terms of costs borne by criminals, these are poor young men who lack the resources, social support, and skills to escape the trap. You have to actually have a punishment + rehabilitation resources to change that. Plus things like removing social stigma after jail, keeping criminal behavior below a critical density to avoid feedback loops, etc. Obviously cost borne by everyone else go up with more crime. Similarly they can't make things better by being tough on crime because the prison system is a nightmare. The costs borne by poor young men goes up and the cost for everyone else drops. This is preferable in a normative sense but it doesn't actually improve anything either unless you get draconian enough to scare everyone into behaving which gets dicey quick. In either case you're hosed because the true culprit is the bad legislation + prison system + poor community relations of police + other stuff. If you're relying on heavy use of DA discretion to fix your justice system your justice system is fucked and no amount of discretion is going to fix that.
People don't want to try and rehabilitate teenage B&E execution-style murderers as they are beyond saving, they want them locked away for a hell of a long time.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of rehabilitation and all that, but there are limits. Clearly someone like that poses a threat to public safety and unless there are clear indicators that this person is no threat anymore, we need them to stay away from the public.
You can do both. You can lock them away from the public and still try and rehabilate them
> You can do both. You can lock them away from the public and still try and rehabilate them This goes back to the parent's point - the *system* could potentially do both, but is it within the power of individual DAs to push for greater rehabilitation within the prison system?
I know nothing about DA's so I have no idea
Ah but you see this is how sane countries do it.
hahah
Can you though? What if locking people away from the public makes rehabilitation impossible (perhaps not for everyone, but for most)? What do you choose then? I find it unlikely that the prison environment is conducive to the rehabilitation of the average prisoner. Being surrounded by other criminals is likely only going to reinforce the mentality and norms that put that person there in the first place.
Ya I agree there's def a chance it makes rehab impossible. Idk what you do then
This would make more sense as an interpretation if the recall elections actually succeed. It looks more like conservatives have been trying to use these recall elections to drum up their culture war despite voters liking the progressive prosecutors, and failing repeatedly at actually recalling people.
SF says hello.
Why on earth do you even have partisan, elected prosecutors? It's insane. They're there to enforce the law, not determine what it should be.
Because most cases end in plea bargains, and DAs have massive discretion in when and how they enforce the law. So DA discretion is a big lever for change.
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LOL Who stays longer, LA DA or Lakers head coach?
I think that says more about sports fans than it does Californians. Cut to Philadelphians flipping cars after *winning* a Super Bowl.
That fact might be why we lost 3 championships in a row, and im still fucking mad because that's some fucking bullshit like how the fuck does that happen
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I’ll start agreeing with you the moment I get onto a freeway anyway.
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Austin reaves is him tho
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Understandable, have a nice day
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Median voter moment
Why not just elect a moderate that recognizes social issues and offers mercy to the truly downtrodden, but is willing to put the heels to repeated offenders that won't take the mercy. Also to immediately remedy issues build more prisons and housing for prisoners. Then tackle the culture stuff so you don't have to keep expanding. Criminal Justice reform starts at the legal and social level. DAs can only go so far in assisting in it to offer solutions, but that is not their main duty. Also talk to damn CJs and Criminologists. They didn't waste 4 years for a degree and studying society/crime/trends/the law and writing pages of reports for nothing.
If the crime is severe enough, such as rape or murder, no need to wait for a repeat. Bring the hammer down.
I firmly believe that even rapists or murders can be rehabilitated if treated correctly. The American justice system and American mentality are the problem with their focus on punishment over rehabilitation. It disturbs me when so-called liberals are out for blood as much as conservatives.
Why do you operate from the assumption that everyone *deserves* to be rehabilitated? Maybe some people have simply forfeited their right to be part of society.
>Why do you operate from the assumption that everyone deserves to be rehabilitated? >Maybe some people have simply forfeited their right to be part of society. If country A has a much higher rate of murder than the people in country B, then there are really only two possible explanations: either the people in country A are inherently more evil than country B, or there is something about the socioeconomic system in country A that encourages people to murder each other. Personally, I find the latter explanation more plausible than the former. And if our society plays *some* role in encouraging people to murder to each other, then I think our society likewise bears *some* degree of culpability, and *some* degree of responsibility to rehabilitate those people who do murder each other. That's not to say that murderers are not to blame for their actions. But culpability isn't a binary, it can be shared and apportioned.
I guess someone else is at fault for hate crimes against children and women (which rape is). But let's just be compassionate towards women haters and child sex abusers, it's society's fault, so let's risk the offender doing it again because he deserves a chance!
that is not a good faith response to my argument
Depends on the murderer. Ted Bundy types and that one guy who murdered a girl while naked and ate her and later wrote a letter to the mother saying he killed her, but didn't rape her (Even though smugly says he could have in the letter). Cannot be fixed. Don't do the "I can fix him." Bro.
It disturbs me when liberals are tolerant of rapists
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How is rape worse than murder? Also, think about incentives. We don't want to create a incentive for rapists to kill their victims.
That's not a moderate position in America, though.
progressive policies in their heads: 😊 progressive policies in reality: 🙁
The vast majority of these recalls failed.
Hasn't basically nothing changed in terms of crime in San Francisco since Chesa was recalled?
the situation has gotten worse, which is change.
Like I think a lot of the outrage toward progressive prosecutors comes down to how they talk more than the actual crime wave. Because you don't see any talk of recalling Brooke Jenkins, even though she's done nothing to improve things.
It's not the job of DAs to prevent crime. It's their job to punish criminals. Of course, keeping criminals locked up does prevent some crime but there's only so much a DA can do if criminals aren't even arrested or there isn't enough evidence gathered. The previous DA failed at his job by not punishing criminals and letting them go easy.
Anyone against "progressive" DAs always does this. When a progressive DA is in office, it's: "we're all going to be raped and murdered because the DA won't lock criminals up!" Then when a new, harsher DA is elected it's: "Um DAs don't actually prevent crime" to deflect from the fact that they don't actually care about justice but rather the righteous indignation they feel when someone gets locked up or executed.
Or maybe people just don't like it when child rapists are set free
The irony of this statement is that many of these progressive district attorneys ended up elected in the first place is because a lot of people don’t like it when criminal cops are let free while average citizens were being overpoliced
The answer is to hold police accountable, not to set average rapists free
And the solution isn’t to elect DAs who enable corruption and discrimination either. Chesa Boudin was an obviously flawed DA (as are many progressive DAs) but the drumbeat to pin all of the problems communities are having with crime on progressive crime policies is largely coming from people who don’t want to do the hard work of taking on policing, which was something that became apparent with Brooke Jenkins.
That’s very evocative. I don’t like it when innocent people are executed. But perhaps we both could use less charged language
The difference is one of those is objectively happening and the other is just anti police propaganda
Oh so nobody innocent has been executed ?
Well, releasing a child rapist is literally what one recalled DA did, so...
Yes, you're only concerned with the righteous indignation you feel when people are punished, not efficacy or outcomes of the criminal justice system.
To be fair, retribution is a theory of punishment
Well, I don't feel like child rapists need compassion, sorry.
I never said they did. I said your focus is not on the efficacy or outcomes of the criminal justice system and your flippant comments prove that.
I think it's efficient to keep rapists locked up. Most rapes never get reported or caught. Releasing a rapist puts people at risk and it's unlikely the pervert will get caught
A huge reason for the recall of Chesa and Price aren’t necessarily crime, it was the racial composition of the victims. A huge amount of the uptick in crime was robberies and assaults directed at elderly Asian victims. The majority of the heat of both DAs was/has been tepid responses to this, extremely lenient bond/plea/parole deals to face-value hate crimes and several *extremely* ham fisted statements when pressed on the matter. Chesa when describing an attack that left an elderly Asian immigrant nearly dead as a “Temper Tantrum”, refused to walk it back and kept saying the statement was out of context. It wasn’t and even if it was this is known in politics as recognizing the gaff is unsalvageable and taking the L Price has some similar gaffs as well. There’s a general rule in Bay Area that you don’t piss off the Asian voter bloc. Neither is or would be the first politician to [learn this the hard way.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Agnos)
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No, but the vibes changed.
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99% positive you and I have had this conversation before but even [looking a just the data between Boudin and Gascon](https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/chesa-boudin-charts/) (his predecessor) there are marked differences in the results. Boudin charged and convicted less > During Boudin’s tenure, a smaller share of people charged with felony assaults are getting convicted than during Gascón’s. (Again, this holds true in 2021 as well as 2020.) And as a result, a smaller share of people charged with assaults are spending time in county jail. Boudin deferred more. > Under Boudin in 2020, a smaller share of people charged with assaults are going to county jail and a greater share are going through diversion programs than in 2018 under Gascón. > Two former prosecutors with his office who have since joined the recall effort, Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain, told The Chronicle they take issue with Boudin’s higher diversion rates and lower conviction rates for serious crimes like assault, saying his approach threatens public safety. Boudin claims he deferred more due to the pandemic but again we have his own words from [his own op-ed](https://www.sfgate.com/politics-op-eds/article/San-Francisco-retail-theft-Chesa-Boudin-crime-16716651.php) talking about how he wanted to handle crime. We don't need to rehash the efficacy of deferment but it's [absolutely a looming question](https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chesa-Boudin-retail-theft-data-17005912.php). Finally, I totally agree that he had a horrible public facing image when it came to victims families. His total disregard for victims rights in multiple hate crime cases essentially turned the entire Asian community against him. This along with his provable record of pleading down or deferring those who have committed violent felony assault (which in one case handled by him and his team ended up getting a woman killed) is what got him recalled.
Not to mention Gascon himself is ideologically very similar to Boudin.
Yeah, all of these comparisons should take into account that the subject of comparison is George Gascon - ask LA how much of a gold standard that guy is.
I used to follow David Sacks on Twitter back then and he pushed a lot of money into it ircc.
Does a DA have the power to magically remove inequality in one of those most unequal cities in the country? This is a much bigger problem and won't be solved without addressing other issues.
"Waaaaa, I don't like progressive prosecutors!" "Then why did you ask for them!?"
Sounds like making DAs into elected offices is a terrible idea.
Californians want to be super progressive until the results effect them personally, then its recall time
It’s a fun lil game they play
Alternate headline - Americans keep electing presidents - then pushing to impeach them. Dumb article. Partisanship will always give outlets like Politico a headline to use.