Earlier this month, voters in California rolled back a number of criminal justice reforms on the ballot. Los Angeles ousted District Attorney George Gascón, who had been elected on pledges to end cash bail and prioritize violent crime. San Francisco reelected District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who oversaw a spike in crime in her first year in office after replacing Chesa Boudin after his 2022 recall.
The conventional wisdom came together quickly: “Public safety” had won the day. Crime was up, and reforms were out. Initial takeaways from the results concluded that voters were getting “serious on crime” and proclaimed that the reform push was dead.
In Alameda County, California, the local prosecutor, Pamela Price, who had also pledged to end cash bail and let low-level offenses go uncharged, was ousted in her race — but not because of a huge spike in crime. Oakland, the most populous city in Alameda County, saw a 33 percent drop in homicides this year.
Contrary to the prevailing narrative, the fate of criminal justice reforms throughout the state is more complicated than it seems. California is experiencing historically low levels of crime statewide. Apart from the homicide spike that affected cities and rural areas around the country during the Covid-19 pandemic, crime in California has been relatively steady since the late 1990s.
It was a major shift. In recent years, California had been a bastion of reform. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure of death row at San Quentin State Prison. Legislators passed the Racial Justice Act in 2020, a landmark bill that made it easier to challenge criminal convictions based on evidence of racial bias. And, that same year, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure to radically transform the jail system and allocate funding to alternatives to incarceration.
So what changed? Voters had certainly been primed with sensational coverage of shoplifting sprees and horror stories blaming reform-minded DAs for letting offenders off the hook. And outsized spending from corporations, real estate interests, and tech investors helped opponents of reform get their message out.
Money, though, wasn’t the only factor in ousting Price and Gascón or leading voters to oppose abolishing slave labor in prisons, said Anne Irwin, founder and director of the criminal justice policy advocacy group Smart Justice California.
“And the question now is, how should we respond? How can we make voters feel safe and actually be safe?”
“What’s really happening here is the housing crisis and the prevalence of unhoused people on the streets up and down California is creating for people a psychological sense of disorder, which will absolutely, inevitably make them feel unsafe,” Irwin said. “And unless and until we begin to really meaningfully solve our housing crisis and our homelessness crisis, it will be very hard to make Californians feel safe.”
“And the question now is, how should we respond? How can we make voters feel safe and actually be safe?” she said. “We have to meet voters where they are and first and foremost, acknowledge their feelings, especially fear.”
People’s fears, whether rooted in personal experience or influences like news media and ad campaigns, can’t be explained away with data, Irwin said. Whether unfounded or not, people need those feelings validated.
“If we ignore or downplay those feelings, we will lose voters. And we have lost voters because we have downplayed their feelings.”
Price of Fear
In Alameda County, voters who had elected reformer Price as district attorney just two years earlier chose to recall her, an effort that began taking root before Price was elected.
Shortly after Price won her election in 2022, some of the same donors who funded Boudin’s recall shifted their sights to Alameda. They launched a recall campaign just seven months after she took office. In an April interview with The Intercept, Price said wealthy investors funding the recall got involved to protect real estate interests in downtown Oakland.
On Monday, Price conceded the recall results and released a statement listing her accomplishments in office. She touted her prosecutions of murders and violent crimes, which she said came at a higher rate than her predecessor, as well as charges she brought against police for homicide. (The campaign against the recall declined the comment and pointed to Price’s statement.) Those accomplishments, however, hadn’t been enough.
The opposite tack — taking “tough-on-crime” positions — has failed too. The mainstream of the Democratic Party has tried to assuage voters’ fears around crime and safety, but the strategy served to boost opponents of reform, who tend to repeat the same claims sensationalizing crime whether it’s up or down.
Now, just as national Democrats are wrestling with their messaging failures, criminal justice policy advocates are grappling with the fact that plying people with facts isn’t enough to win elections.
Acknowledging where reformers can learn from their mistakes is not the same as capitulating to people who want to bring back the failed strategies of mass incarceration, said Jessica Brand, a strategist who works with reform DAs around the country, including Gascón, the Los Angeles DA who lost his reelection bid by more than 20 points.
“That solution is not mass incarceration — it’s supportive housing and actual treatment beds and economic support.”
“We as a progressive movement need to work harder to implement the robust solutions that actually respond to people’s fears and concerns. These are also, by the way, solutions that we morally need,” Brand said. The key solution lies in supportive housing, actual treatment beds, and economic support, not in mass incarceration. People often resort to familiar but ineffective solutions like jail and prisons when real support is lacking, emphasized Brand.
Reflecting on the lessons learned from the “Warm to Reform” campaign, Irwin of Smart Justice California noted that reform can be embraced as long as it includes accountability for crimes. The success of Proposition 36 and Nathan Hochman’s campaign showed that voters desire a balanced approach that emphasizes both accountability and reform, rather than a return to mass incarceration.
Irwin highlighted that while tough-on-crime rhetoric didn’t dominate legislative races, the upcoming years will be crucial in shaping public safety policies. Recent election results in various states demonstrate continued support for criminal justice reform despite challenges.
California’s unique circumstances, including easy recall processes, the housing crisis, and the fentanyl epidemic, have complicated the debate around crime and justice reform. The state’s significant financial investments in political campaigns further influence the discourse.
For instance, Rick Caruso’s $100 million mayoral campaign in Los Angeles focused on linking candidate Karen Bass to DA Gascón, contributing to a narrative of public safety concerns. Although Caruso failed to win the mayoral race, his efforts were successful in undermining Gascón’s position.
In Alameda County, preparations are underway to appoint a replacement for Price, who will serve until at least 2026 when voters will have the opportunity to elect a new DA. Please rewrite this sentence.
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