San Francisco

I spent years visiting prisons and courts. At every turn, facilities forced me to comply with invasive searches that left me feeling sexually violated.

After a moral panic about crime, San Francisco’s billionaires and political leaders demanded more arrests. Pretrial detainees are now seeing the harmful effects.

The overall crime rate is nearly as low as it’s been in decades, but that hasn’t stopped officials from pushing draconian measures likely only to fuel mass incarceration and harm public safety. It’s time for a different approach.

Jenkins won’t charge the security guard who shot Banko Brown to death. That’s precisely why San Franciscans elected her in the first place.

If Brooke Jenkins fails to deliver results with “tough-on-crime” policies, will San Franciscans blame her, just as they did her predecessor, Chesa Boudin?

The new San Francisco DA is mixing “tough-on-crime” rhetoric with phony progressivism. Neither will solve the city’s problems.

For the wealthy backers of the Boudin recall, “progressive” prosecutors are the perfect scapegoat for what they see as threats to a system that treats them just fine.

As politicians look to build public support for homeless encampment sweeps, they’re using tactics popularized in LA—the site of one of the nation’s most intense battles over the unhoused.

Reporters who parrot corporate claims of out-of-control theft play into a narrative that benefits big business and perpetuates carceral policies.

There has been a ‘parabolic increase’ in cities and states giving tenants a right to counsel to help fight evictions.

Philadelphia’s top prosecutor has made good on promises to reduce incarceration in the city. His re-election bid will be a litmus test for the progressive prosecutor movement he helped start.

After more than a year in office—and despite pushback—the San Francisco DA’s policies have kept people out of jails and prisons.

Ensuring renters have representation in housing court would help close a “justice gap” and be a life-saving intervention for those at risk of losing their homes.

Numerous city councils and state legislatures are debating giving renters a right to counsel, which can make the difference between stability and catastrophe.

Current law mandated that the city have at least 1,971 full-time police officers.

A measure on the ballot next month would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, a change that advocates say would crucially expand the voting pool.

Prosecutors in states ranging from New York to Utah are using decades-old gang laws to target participants in the largest uprising against police brutality in U.S. history.

Under current law, established during the “tough on crime” era, San Francisco mandated at least 1,971 full-time police officers. Voters will now have the opportunity to reconsider that mandate.

Taking emergency measures to protect homeless people from the pandemic is simply common sense.

Sheriffs wield enormous power, and they can direct it in ways that will help contain the spread of COVID-19 and protect incarcerated people.

In a joint statement, they emphasized the need to reduce the number of people currently incarcerated in order to contain the deadly COVID-19 virus.

Experts say evictions cause a ‘downward spiral’ of health problems for renters, and that housing security is necessary to slow the spread of the pandemic.

The public defender and district attorney both directed their staffs to keep individuals who are more vulnerable to the virus out of jail.

As a Black child in San Francisco, I learned early that mine and others’ bodies meant nothing to those supposedly tasked with our protection.

“We will prioritize family integrity and family unity at every stage of the process to the extent we can do so.”

The former deputy public defender promised that his office would immediately end cash bail and stop seeking three-strikes sentencing enhancements.

The former San Francisco DA got the nod over incumbent Jackie Lacey, whose tenure advocates and activists have long criticized as lackluster.

Harris’s record as a prosecutor was representative of a politics of the past. The nation has moved on.

Son of incarcerated parents, backed by Black Lives Matter co-founders, Boudin will be the next DA of San Francisco.

Chesa Boudin is just 240 votes behind Suzy Loftus, even after local law enforcement spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat him.

The mayors of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco wrap themselves in the language of progressivism, but when it comes to the criminal legal system they’re Trumpian.

Interim San Francisco D.A. Suzy Loftus claims to be a “progressive,” but her long record as a prosecutor reveals an all-too-familiar path chosen by establishment-types who have little interest in disrupting the status quo.

Ahead of the city’s district attorney election on Tuesday, the alleged baton beating last month of Dacari Spiers has renewed debate over police accountability.

Loftus led the San Francisco Police Commission through a bloody and turbulent era.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is partnering with a technology nonprofit to expunge tens of thousands of minor marijuana convictions. Other jurisdictions could follow.

Our response to crime should focus on healing and accountability, not punishment and retribution.

Heather Marlowe, now an activist, says neglected kits are a reflection of who and what police prioritize.

Police and prosecutors framed a father of four in a 2007 murder case with local and national political implications.

Beginning next week, people locked up in San Francisco will be able to call their loved ones for free. Last year, people in the city’s jails spent $1.7 million on phone calls and commissary, of which half a million went to GTL, a major corrections telecommunication company. For Mayor London Breed, who introduced the provision in the San Francisco […]

Prosecutors are supremely powerful and have played an outsize role in mass incarceration. What can be done?