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The office of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon said its progressive policies that have come under fire and have since become the catalyst for a do-over recall attempt are based on science and research data.
Gascon tweeted a link Wednesday to research posted on the Los Angeles County’s District Attorney’s website that outlined the reasoning behind his criminal justice reforms. The research webpage has been live since last year but the reminder comes amid growing skepticism and backlash from his own prosecutors, law enforcement leaders and crime victims.
“Across the nation, jurisdictions are moving away from a tough-on-crime approach because it destroys budgets, is plagued with inequities and has not made us safer,” the webpage reads.
Upon taking office in December 2020, Gascon issued a number of directives that included barring prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, charging juveniles as adults, sentencing enhancements and asking for cash bail for certain crimes.
In defense of choosing not to prosecute some misdemeanors, the DA’s office wrote that defendants who are not prosecuted for such crimes are less likely to find themselves in the legal system within two years. In response, several Los Angeles County cities have taken over the prosecution of misdemeanors within their borders.
In arguing in favor of the reforms, Gascon’s office cited studies that said alternatives to cash bail like supervised release programs don’t have negative impacts on public safety and increase rates at which defendants return to court. He noted that bail allows defendants with greater financial means to buy their freedom while defendants of color often have bail set in higher amounts than White defendants.
Recall George Gascon sign. Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is facing a recall attempt and criticism from various sides over his criminal justice reforms.
(Getty Images)
Research cited by the DA’s office from the Southern Poverty Law Center said children prosecuted as adults are more likely to re-offend than those held in the juvenile justice system.
The move to stop seeking gang and sentencing enhancements has particularly come under scrutiny. Gascon has said such policies have exacerbated over-incarceration and have not proved to reduce crime.
“Enhancements are also the primary driver of a system of mass incarceration that needlessly siphons billions into jails and prisons, and away from our communities and the investments victims of crime want us to make,” he wrote in a letter days after taking office. “I recognize there are some victims that want this office to seek the maximum sentence permissible in their case, but punishment must be in the community’s best interest, proportional, and it must serve a rehabilitative or restorative purpose.”
California Three Strikes Law and enhancements have exacerbated racial disparities, according to the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which was cited by the DA’s office.
Despite the data, Gascon’s directives have courted controversy. Some crime victims have accused him of having a soft-on-crime approach amid a crime wave while also favoring the rights of criminals.
“I don’t believe his policies are for the people he was voted to serve,” Patrick Miller, whose sister Michelle Avan was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend inside her Los Angeles home in April 2021, previously told Fox News in January. “We expect justice when something happens. He puts you in a position to make justice seem as not the norm.”
Gascon’s office did not file special circumstances charges against the suspect.
Some Los Angeles County prosecutors have come out against the progressive initiatives.
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Eric Siddall, a deputy district attorney who also serves as the vice president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles County, previously told Fox News that his boss hinders his prosecutors.
“It would be like someone said ‘You have a (Apple) MacBook, but I want you to use an abacus to solve this mathematical problem,’” he said. “The district attorney is not always on the side of victims of crime.”
