Questions and Answers

CHALLENGES

What are some of the biggest challenges the DA’s office faces when making reform measures work?

Change is hard. It’s hard for individuals and it’s hard for large organizations. Even when an organization is committed to change, not everyone in that organization changes at the same pace. Some are quicker to change, some are slower.

The criminal justice system is large, complex, and has a lot of moving parts, including police officers, prosecutors, probation officers, defense attorneys, judges, jails, prisons, and parole boards. We are not always moving together or in the same direction.   

Whenever you want to make a reform or an improvement, you must first listen to everyone who will be involved and affected by the change you want to make. Only after listening carefully and thinking deeply about other people’s legitimate views and concerns should you begin to make changes. And you have to keep listening and thinking to make further adjustments and refinements as you move forward. This is how you make real and lasting change.

This film is one way I am trying to move the criminal justice system toward more rehabilitation and less incarceration, toward better treatment for crime victims, and toward stronger trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve.

BUILDING TRUST

What can be done to build trustful relationships between the community and law enforcement?

There are many ways for law enforcement to build trust with the community we serve. Let me highlight a few. To begin with, we have several community prosecutors. Their mission is to prevent crime, and they work in underserved neighborhoods to address juvenile crime, gang violence, blight, and graffiti. They help build community-based organizations for crime-impacted residents to work together and with law enforcement to reduce crime and improve the neighborhood’s quality of life.

In addition, we have many programs that bring law enforcement and the community together when someone is not being arrested or prosecuted, programs such as: Shop with a Cop, Coffee with a Cop, Boba Tea with a Cop, and the DA Explorer Club for high school students.

For several years, the DA’s office has run a program called the Parent Project, for parents of teenagers who are at risk of using drugs, dropping out of school, committing crimes, or joining a criminal street gang. It is a 12-week class taught by prosecutors, police officers, probation officers, and social workers. The Parent Project helps parents become better parents and strengthens families. We offer the classes in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. More than 3,000 parents have graduated from the Parent Project. Most importantly, children whose parents have completed the Parent Project are less likely to commit crimes and more likely to stay in school and graduate.

Finally, transparency can strengthen trust between law enforcement and our community. For example, under my leadership, the DA’s office independently and objectively investigates police use of force resulting in death or great bodily injury. If the officer committed a crime, we file charges. If the officer’s use of force was lawful, we release a detailed public report that describes all the facts, including photos and videos, the law, and why the officer’s actions were not criminal. Moreover, I speak personally to the family of a person who has been killed by the police to express my deep and heartfelt condolences over their loss. Regardless of the legality of the officer’s actions, the loss of life is tragic.

DIVERSION PROGRAMS

What diversion programs does your office have, and is there room to expand?

A diversion program is an alternative approach that holds someone accountable either outside the courtroom or outside of jail.

For instance, we have programs that offer first-time misdemeanor offenders an opportunity to make restitution to the victim, repair the harm caused, and have neither a charge nor a conviction on their criminal record.

We have diversion programs for young offenders in their early 20s who commit low-level felonies and can receive intensive services in juvenile hall, which is a more therapeutic and supportive environment than adult jail.

We divert those addicted to drugs directly to drug treatment and bypass the courts. We have mental health diversion for the mentally ill who commit low level crimes.

We are no longer the collection agency for DMV when poor people lose their driver’s license for not paying fines or fees. Instead, we now divert those cases to traffic court, not criminal court.

We are starting a youth diversion program based upon restorative justice principles that heal the young person, the crime victim, and the whole community.

Is there room for more diversion programs? Yes, and we are looking at more programs, including for parents taking care of young children.

RACIAL JUSTICE

What can be done to address racial disparities from prison terms for nonviolent offenders?

African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately represented in prison. The way to reduce that disparity is to reduce sentences for nonviolent offenses because this disproportionately benefits African Americans and Latinos.

For instance, the nonpartisan think tank, the Public Policy Institute of California, released a study that showed that Prop 47, passed by the voters in 2014, has reduced both the prison population and racial disparities in prison. Prop 47 reduced simple drug possession and low-level theft from felonies to misdemeanors, and did not make us any less safe.

And, Prop 47 took the savings from having fewer people in prison and invested that money in trauma services for crime victims, along with drug treatment and mental health services – more than $350 million, according to the California Department of Finance. I was one of only two DAs in California, out of 58, to support Prop 47. I wrote op-eds and did statewide TV commercials to support Prop 47, which passed overwhelmingly. I received a lot of criticism and pushback from my law enforcement colleagues, but I thought this was the right approach for our society.

EDUCATING OUR PROSECUTORS

Does the DA’s office offer any training to help prosecutors in understanding systemic racism, systemic bias, and the need for rehabilitation?

Yes. Since I was first elected, we have provided regular and extensive training to learn about issues of race and equity, guard against bias and racial profiling, and emphasize rehabilitation for offenders and empathy for victims.

Here is a sample of the training we provide to all DA staff. Shortly after I was first elected, I took a group of top prosecutors from the DA’s office and top police officers from the San Jose Police Department to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to learn about the Holocaust, the proper role of law enforcement in a democracy, and the harm caused by racial profiling.

Recently, I took a group of prosecutors and investigators to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum, which tells the history of the United States from slavery to the Civil War to  Reconstruction to Civil Rights and to Mass Incarceration. We also visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which documents the thousands of African Americans lynched all over the United States.

Several months ago, on Lincoln’s birthday when the courts are closed but the DA’s office is open, I screened the movie “Just Mercy” for our prosecutors and investigators and then led a discussion about the film’s meaning and relevance for law enforcement. This year, on Lincoln’s birthday, we will hear from Dr. Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated an Arkansas high school as a teenager.

We have brought experts in implicit bias, including Stanford Professor Jennifer Eberhardt, to regularly teach and train our staff on how to make decisions free from bias.

We were the first DA’s office in the nation to publish a yearly “Race and Prosecution Study,” detailing the demographics of criminal offenders and crime victims.

We educate our staff about the history of Santa Clara County, including redlining and other discriminatory practices, and how that history currently affects crime, education, and poverty in our community.

We teach our staff about the incredible diversity of our county, where dozens of languages are spoken and 40% of our residents were not born in the United States. For instance, we have had presentations about American Muslims and Hindus.

We require all prosecutors to visit jails and prisons, speak with inmates, and observe rehabilitative programs – including restorative justice circles.

Finally, we have brought wrongfully convicted and exonerated individuals to the DA’s office to talk about what happened to them and how we can do better, so that only the guilty are convicted.

A BETTER JUSTICE?

How can the prison reform measures that you learned about in Germany be shared and implemented in California?

Article 1 of the German Constitution states that “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.” 

The German Supreme Court has consistently cited Article 1 to require that prisons adopt policies and practices that respect human dignity, including one person to a cell, inmates wearing their own clothes, almost no solitary confinement, and no death penalty. Moreover, German prisons are clean and well-run. Their prisons are nice places for the inmates to live and for the correctional staff to work, which leads to less violence in prison and less crime when offenders are released.

In Santa Clara County, our jail is implementing some of the things I saw in Germany. For instance, as inmates come to the end of their sentences, before release back into the community, they will be connected with re-entry services— including drug treatment and help finding a job or housing. Our jail also plans to allow inmates who are doing well and nearing release to wear their own clothes.

There is much more we can do to make our prisons into places that encourage and facilitate rehabilitation, which benefits our entire society. I think it starts with a belief that people should be held accountable for their crimes but also given a chance to better themselves, seek forgiveness, and become law-abiding and productive members of our society.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORMS AT THE BALLOT BOX

Can you comment on the defeat of Prop 20 and Prop 25?

I am pleased Prop 20 was defeated by a very large margin, 63%. Once again California voters were clear that they want a criminal justice system that reduces incarceration and increases rehabilitation, drug treatment, mental health services, and restorative justice programs that help victims heal while creating a space for reconciliation. A little mercy can go a long way to make our communities safer and more harmonious.

So, the overwhelming defeat of Prop 20 is great news as it allows California to continue to strengthen funding for rehabilitation, youth education, crime prevention, services for crime victims, drug treatment, and mental health services. These are cheaper and more effective than building more prisons and warehousing ever-increasing numbers of inmates for longer and longer sentences.

On the other hand, I was very disappointed with the defeat of Prop 25, which sought to eliminate cash bail and create a more equitable pre-trial detention system that focuses on an individual’s dangerousness, not the size of their wallet.

The problem with cash bail is that it asks the wrong question “How much money does someone have?” We need to ask a different question: “Is this person too dangerous, too violent, to release from custody before his trial?” If the answer is yes, he should be held in custody, period, no matter how much money he has. On the other hand, if the person can be safely released, perhaps with conditions like drug testing, an ankle monitor, a stay-away order, then the person should be released with those conditions, no matter how poor.

The point is that money should not have anything to do with this decision. The decision should be based upon whether or not the person is safe to release before his trial.

And, cash bail sucks hundreds of millions of dollars out of poor communities into bail bonds companies. With no cash bail, that money will remain in those communities, working for and supporting those communities.

I will continue to promote the elimination of cash bail in favor of a system that looks at a person’s propensity for violence, not their wealth, and hopefully a better and more persuasive case will be made to voters in the future.