Crime, Drugs & Public Order
Prosecution & Accountability
Consequences work. The progressive-DA experiment ran, the data came in, and voters in the bluest cities reversed it.
The Stakes
A law on the books means nothing if no one enforces it. When a prosecutor announces whole categories of crime won't be charged, the message reaches offenders faster than it reaches victims. The people who pay are the corner-store owner, the bus driver, the family in the neighborhood that can't move away. This isn't about cruelty — most people want a justice system that's both fair and certain. The progressive-prosecutor experiment tested whether you could keep fairness while dropping certainty. Voters in some of the most progressive cities in America watched the result and voted to reverse it.
The Receipts
Every figure cites a primary federal source. Tap a chip to check it yourself.
55% to recallSan Francisco — one of the most progressive cities in the country — recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin in June 2022 with about 55% voting yes, after rising frustration over open-air drug markets and property crime.
SF Dept. of Elections / Ballotpedia ↗Charging is discretionaryA prosecutor's decision to decline charges is largely unreviewable, which is why declared no-charge policies for whole offense categories effectively rewrite the law without a single vote in the legislature.
BJS ↗Declinations matterFederal prosecutor data tracks declinations as a core outcome; where they spike, arrests stop converting into cases, and the deterrent effect of an arrest collapses.
BJS ↗Bipartisan reversalAfter Boudin, voters and officials in Democratic-led jurisdictions moved to restore harder-line prosecution and theft penalties — a course correction, not a partisan crusade.
CalMatters ↗Certainty over severityDecades of criminology find the certainty of being caught and charged deters more than the severity of punishment — which is exactly what no-charge policies erode.
NIJ ↗Their Best Argument — and Why It Fails
The steelman
Mass incarceration devastated communities, fell hardest on Black and brown defendants, and didn't make us safer. Reform prosecutors were elected to end cash-register justice and over-charging, and treating addiction or poverty as a crime never worked.
The rebuttal
The critique of over-incarceration is serious and partly right — we should charge proportionately and divert genuine low-level cases to treatment. But declared no-charge policies for entire categories of crime are a different thing: they don't reform punishment, they remove consequence. The clearest verdict came from voters, not Republicans. San Francisco recalled Boudin by 55%, and Democratic-led cities moved to restore theft penalties soon after. The research backs them: certainty of consequence deters more than severity, so when charging stops, deterrence stops too. Accountability and fairness aren't opposites — abandoning one doesn't deliver the other.
The Conservative Fix
- 1
Require DAs to publish charging and declination rates by offense, so blanket no-charge policies are visible to voters.
Local - 2
Strengthen state recall and oversight mechanisms for prosecutors who refuse to enforce duly enacted laws.
State - 3
Pair proportional charging with real diversion-to-treatment tracks — consequences and off-ramps, not one or the other.
State / Local - 4
Fund victim-services and case-coordination units so cases don't collapse for lack of follow-through.
State / Local
Answer the Muster
Who decides this: Your District Attorney and state legislators (charging policy is a DA decision; oversight is state law)
I'm a constituent in [district]. I support fair, proportional prosecution — and I oppose blanket no-charge policies that remove consequences for whole categories of crime. I'm asking [DA/legislator] to publish charging and declination rates by offense. Will [he/she] commit to that transparency?