On Monday morning, with a backdrop at the hulking Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, a symbol of the city’s place as the nation’s largest jailer, Gascon said he was finally entering the race, setting up what activists have described as the most important district attorney’s race in the United States.
Promising a “safer, more humane, more effective and far less expensive criminal justice system” for Los Angeles, Gascon, in his announcement, cited his record in reducing jail populations in San Francisco.
“The way the criminal justice system operates must change, in the face of overwhelming data and scientific evidence that shows that we have been doing things for the past 40 years that are not only inhumane but expensive and also has not made us any safer,” he said.
As cities across America, like Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, have elected progressive prosecutors promising to end mass incarceration, Los Angeles has resisted the trend, twice electing Jackie Lacey, a get-tough-on-crime prosecutor who has earned the support of much of the city’s political elite.
Gascon’s entry into the race, regardless of who wins, will surely reshape the conversation around criminal justice in Los Angeles County, a vast area of 88 cities that is home to 10.3 million people and the nation’s largest jail system and prosecutor’s office. Because of the county’s size and its relatively high incarceration rates, The Los Angeles Times wrote in a recent editorial, “There is a strong case to be made that aside from the presidential race, the most important item before voters in 2020 will be the race for L.A. County D.A.”
“There are a lot of eyes on this race and for good reason,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, an organization that promotes reformist prosecutors. “LA hasn’t embraced new thinking that other urban areas are trying to push forward.”
She described the race as “really a test of where leaders will stand in Los Angeles.”
As district attorney in San Francisco, a post he resigned from this month to move to Los Angeles and consider a challenge to Lacey, Garcon drew national attention for diverting more young adults up to age 25 away from prison, automatically expunging past marijuana convictions and lowering incarceration rates.
“I think to some extent he was out there by himself for a number of those years doing things that were courageous, and it probably helped that he was on the left coast,” said Larry Krasner, the district attorney in Philadelphia, who was elected in 2017 on a platform of reducing mass incarceration.
In Los Angeles, it has been a different story: Under Lacey, Los Angeles, which accounts for almost a third of the state’s prison population of close to 130,000 inmates, has sent people to prison or jail at more than four times the rate of San Francisco. Yet in both cities, crime is at historical lows, with the fewest murders in nearly a half century last year.
California has passed several measures in recent years to reduce prison populations and change the criminal justice system.
Gascon joins two other candidates, both prosecutors, who are also challenging Lacey from the left: Richard Ceballos, 57, a former defense lawyer who now focuses on prosecuting organized crime cases; and Joseph Iniguez, 33, who was a schoolteacher before he became a prosecutor.
Voters will have their first say March 3, when California holds its presidential primary. If one of the candidates receives more than 50% of the vote, then he or she will win. If not, the top two finishers will advance to a general election in November 2020.
“I have a tremendous amount of passion for what happens in LA, and for the last few years I have become increasingly more uneasy seeing the backwardness of the criminal justice system in LA,” Gascon said in an interview last week, before he announced his candidacy.
Gascon, a Cuban émigré, moved to Los Angeles with his family as a boy. He attended Bell High School there but dropped out and entered a three-year stint in the Army, where he earned his high school degree.
Gascon was a beat cop in South Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s — he eventually rose to assistant chief of the department — a time of soaring crime rates, gang violence and the crack epidemic, and a time when Los Angeles and the nation were locking up more and more people, particularly black men.
Gascon, who was appointed district attorney in San Francisco in 2011, replacing Kamala Harris, and then was elected twice, referred to himself as having been a “lock-’em-up guy in the ’80s and ’90s.”
He said, “I am not proud of some of the things I did in the past and I want to figure out a way to do it differently.”
Lacey, who prefers to portray herself as a crime fighter, a more traditional approach for a prosecutor, has lately moved to divert more mentally ill people from Los Angeles’ jails, which have been described as the nation’s largest mental health system.
Lacey spent her formative years in turbulent South Los Angeles, where she grew up and saw her neighborhood become consumed by drugs and crime. And, like many in law enforcement, she said there was no easy answer to why crime rates have fallen so sharply: Have they dropped because of mass incarceration, or in spite of it?
“Things did get better, and I wish I knew the secret,” she said in an interview earlier this year, pointing out the importance of keeping crime low as Los Angeles prepares to host the Olympics in 2028.
“I really want to keep it that way. I want to keep people safe. I want businesses to come here. If the city wants to host the Olympics, I don’t want there to be a discussion about what we do about crime,” she said.
“On the other hand, I realize, probably because of my own personal experience, is that a lot of people did get caught up in the drug trade and they can reform and they can come out. And there does need to be a shift in our thinking about addiction and mental health.”
This article originally appeared in
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