2 California Prosecutors Promised a Different Kind of Justice. Voters Turned on Them

California’s two best-known “progressive” prosecutors were doing what they promised the voters who elected them.

Pamela Price, elected as Alameda County District Attorney in 2022, implemented a policy to guard against racial biases in sentencing enhancements and exposed the exclusion of Black and Jewish people from death penalty juries. A court order to review those biases is currently underway.

George Gascón, a former San Francisco police chief first elected as Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, established policies that prohibited his prosecutors from pursuing exorbitant sentencing enhancements, transferring juvenile cases into adult courts and advocating against offender reentry at parole board hearings.

But their movement suffered a serious setback in this month’s election when Price failed to defeat a recall, and Gascón lost his bid for reelection in a landslide to Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor who ran for attorney general as a Republican two years ago. Those defeats followed on the heels of San Francisco’s former progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who was recalled in 2022.

The ousting of the two district attorneys punctuates a change in statewide views on law enforcement and public safety approaches. California voters this election overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure that stiffened penalties for some drug and theft crimes.

“You can’t just burn the system down,” said Anne Marie Schubert, former Sacramento County District Attorney, who battled former Gov. Jerry Brown over his criminal justice policies. “They get elected, and then all of a sudden, they implement policies that are so far removed from being a real prosecutor who is seeking balance and accountability.”

It’s a sobering moment for criminal justice advocates who backed progressive prosecutors around the nation over the past decade.

“All successful movements experience setbacks, and the movement to course correct the criminal justice system is no different,” said Anne Irwin, founder and director of the criminal justice advocacy group Smart Justice California. “We will regroup and continue to fight for the values that animate our work.”

Roots of the progressive prosecutor movement

Nearly a decade ago, criminal justice advocates looked to who they saw as the most important decision-makers in the state’s criminal justice ecosystem — prosecutors.

In an attempt to counteract the over-incarceration of Black and brown people that resulted from decades of tough-on-crime prosecution, leaders of the movement encouraged prosecutors to use tools that weren’t entirely dependent on incarceration as a way to address harm in a community.

According to Cynthia Chandler, policy director for Price, that has meant addressing the root causes of violence and giving prosecutors flexibility in how they respond to crime, such as sending more people to diversion programs as an alternative to incarceration.

“Ultimately, what’s behind the vision of a progressive prosecutor is a prosecutor who is committed to the ethical mandate placed on prosecutors to search for truth and justice,” Chandler said. “And the search for truth is not furthered by seeking out a pound of flesh.”

The movement picked up in 2016 with funding from Democratic mega-donor George Soros. For the most part, progressive prosecutors have been on the rise since then, with candidates finding success in places such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Brooklyn.

This election, two progressive prosecutors won their races in Orlando, Florida and Austin, Texas. However, UC Berkeley political science professor Eric Schickler said progressive defeats in California suggest the need for recalibration.

“Social movements often come onto the scene with a very big, bold kind of vision,” Schickler said. “And to the extent that they’re successful and then get involved in actual governance, there tend to be forces that push back. It’s hard to change everything all at once. There’s built-in resistance both bureaucratically and also in public opinion.”

In California, these district attorneys faced an additional hurdle because the state allows voters to recall prosecutors before their term is up. Price lost her office just two years into a six-year term.

“Some of these prosecutors have been put in really tricky positions, and particularly with the ones who faced a recall, (they) were barely able to implement anything in office before wealthy interests had mobilized to gather enough signatures to try to drive them out,” said Becca Goldstein, assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley.

Dan Schnur, a political analyst and professor at the University of Southern California, attributes the defeat of Price and Gascón to ideological and management factors. When voters expressed growing concern over what they viewed as a lenient response to public safety and criminal justice, Schnur said the DAs failed to recognize them.

“The best politicians are those who are able to adjust to and address those changes in public opinion,” Schnur said. “Those who aren’t able to adjust become former elected officials.”

What’s next in LA, Alameda County?

In the wake of their defeats, criminal justice reform advocates are taking a closer look at their strategy.

Boudin, now executive director of UC Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, said criminal justice reform advocates have to do a better job of messaging the vision for their policies.

“You can’t expect elected prosecutors to do the work of solving homelessness and substance use. They don’t have the tools (or) the mandate … so how can we, as a movement, make sure that we’re not just electing progressive prosecutors, but we’re electing mayors and boards of supervisors and city councils who are willing to do the policy work of solving these problems?” he said. “Because if we keep dumping them on the criminal justice system, it’s not going to work.”

District attorneys, he said, cannot and should not be expected to solve all of the world’s problems.

“To think that it is the DA’s job to clean up Skid Row, it’s absurd,” said Garrett Miller, president of the Los Angeles Public Defenders Union. “That is a societal failure … it’s not just the DA, nor is it really his responsibility — even though he may claim it is.”

It’s unclear who will succeed Price. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will appoint an interim replacement to lead the office until 2026. In Los Angeles County, the choice is definitive, with Hochman expected to make sweeping changes as soon as he replaces Gascon on Dec. 2.

“We’re definitely afraid for our clients,” Miller said. “It’s a drastic change. Many more will do significantly more time. That’s the reality of it.”

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles, said “everyone’s really excited” to see Hochman take over.

“We’re immediately going to see the highly trained professionals of this office use their experience and knowledge to make decisions about the best outcomes for cases based upon the facts — rather than on blanket policies,” she said. “Which is the best thing for the defendants, for the victims, and for public safety.”

Alameda County Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods said district attorneys in the mold of Gascón and Price “moved prosecution in the right direction, but it really is the direction it should have been moving in all along.”

“I think there’s a space for prosecutors to do the right thing, independent of your label,” he said.

What do voters want?

In Alameda County, Price was recalled with roughly 65% of votes. Nathan Hochman defeated Gascón with roughly 60% of votes.

“To be truthful, I would like to believe it’s the end of (the progressive prosecutor movement),” Schubert said. “Any mainstream career prosecutor is going to tell you, yes, we support reforms. But at the end of it all, it cannot be extreme. It must be driven by the facts in the law. Every case is unique.”

Those concerns were echoed by Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley, who backed Proposition 36.

“There seems to be this sort of sentiment that everyone, if they just took a class, would get better and engage in no more criminal activities. That kind of naivete is harmful,” Haley said. “That can be true for many of the people we see through the criminal justice system. But we’ve done too good of a job of sanitizing what we do because I believe that there exists cruelty.”

Groups that supported Gascón and Price say their defeats don’t necessarily signal a far departure from voters’ investment in criminal justice reform. Proponents of Proposition 36, for example, talked about steering more people convicted of drug crimes to treatment.

Hochman changed his political affiliation from a lifelong Republican to an independent before his run for district attorney. During his candidacy, he cited the need for more rehabilitation opportunities for incarcerated people and more community service programs for first-time, nonviolent offenders.

That tells some who supported progressive prosecutors that voters have not walked away from those values, but they’ve expressed frustration that things aren’t changing quickly enough, said Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of a nationwide organization that supports reform-oriented approaches to public safety.

“I think there is a need and an eagerness from voters and residents in California to see a justice system that actually works — that’s not just a revolving door or a dungeon — and that we can find ways to problem solve, that we can find ways to rehabilitate people, that we can find better ways to help victims heal,” Soto DeBerry said.

Irwin said California prosecutors who are “repudiating” their tough-on-crime identity signal a shift.

“That’s really the story of the progressive prosecution’s evolution in California — that now, it’s become mainstream for candidates in prosecutor races up and down the state to actually embrace reform,” Irwin said. “They know that the approach they have taken for the last 30 years is no longer palpable for Californians. I really hope that they genuinely do the work of reform-minded prosecution rather than just paying it lip service at election time.”

CalMatters reporter Joe Garcia contributed to this report. Cayla Mihalovich and Joe Garcia are California Local News fellows.