It seems like only yesterday that criminal justice reform was in vogue.

Progressives were chosen as prosecutors. Laws were passed to ease prison overcrowding and divert offenders from the system who needed treatment, not jail time. Condemnation of crack-era and three-strikes-era excesses were reversed. The bail system and the death penalty were on the defensive.

Then came the inevitable backlash. When the crime rates crept out of their neighborhood

Historically low levels, the mood soured and conservative tough stances on crime began to re-emerge, contrary to the liberal agenda.

Chesa Boudin, the progressive San Francisco district attorney elected in 2019, was impeached in a 2022 recall election after being accused of “coddling” criminals. Los Angeles

district

distance Att

j

. George Gascn, another reformer with an alleged “pro-criminal” agenda, narrowly evaded his second recall last year.

Homelessness and crime became dining room discussions in LA and San Francisco; violence in the subways kept New Yorkers busy. Fentanyl-related overdoses led San Francisco to reconsider its city laws. The law that reformed New York City’s unfair bail process four years ago has been rolled back three times, most recently in April. Police departments, once threatened with closure, have seen their budgets rise in many cities across the country.

Leading up to last fall’s midterm elections, according to Gallup, crime was the second most important topic for voters.

The battle is on, and it was against this background that I read last week that Boudin, the 42-year-old public defender-turned-prosecutor turned private citizen, has been hired by the UC Berkeley School of Law as executive director of a new criminal law

&

Justice center.

The center will litigate, advocate legislative interests and provide public education, presumably aimed at reforming our often unfair, punitive and inefficient criminal justice system.

But I was especially pleased to hear, when I called Boudin to talk about the new job, that he also emphasized another area: data analytics and research. He says he’s tired of the public conversation about crime policy being devoid of science or data or even short-term memory.

It’s about time.

It has long been a truism that views on crime and punishment are cyclical, characterized by pendulum swings of leniency followed by a desire to crack down and lock everyone up indefinitely. Public sentiment largely depends on whether crime appears to be increasing or decreasing.

But often those mood swings are based on how safe people are

feeling

rather than how safe they actually are; they are not driven by facts but by emotion, fear and gruesome anecdotes. Public policy is often made in response to headlines and sensational tweets, and by politicians reading polls.

In addition, there is strong political pressure from police and prison guard unions, prosecutors and crime victim groups whose terrifying stories encourage a return to the throw-away-the-key policy they believe in. On the other hand, progressive Reformers, like their opponents, can also be ideologically rigid and driven by emotion.

So I’m all for more hard information about what’s happening, what works, and what doesn’t. Boudin notes that legislators tend to pass laws but not look back a year or two later to analyze their results. Or they set up pilot programs and then, bizarrely enough, don’t study the results.

Here are some things I’d like to know (although I’m not suggesting they haven’t been studied):

If we divert people from the criminal justice system to substance abuse treatment or mental health care, do they clean up their actions or do they reoffend?

If we release more suspects before they go to trial, will crime rates rise dramatically or insignificantly?

Do Safe Consumption Sites Encourage Drug Use? And if so, how do you weigh that against the lives they save by preventing overdoses?

Boudin is a well-known advocate of progressive criminal justice reform policies. I asked him if his data analysis would only be to confirm his preconceived notions. Hey, bushy.

I have my worldview, my lived experience and my professional experience, but that doesn’t mean we will be results-oriented in our research, he said. I want policy choices to be supported by facts, not by the lack of information we currently have.

For my part, I support criminal justice reform, but I am not an ideologue. I think we lock up too many people who really need treatment. We make it far too difficult for ex-convicts to re-enter society. There are blatant inequalities, racial and otherwise, in the bail system and sentencing process. Were too tolerant of inhumane treatment and excessive force.

But I also think that dangerous people should be kept off the streets. I think the police should be able to do their job as long as they do it honestly and responsibly.

I would welcome more research to help policymakers develop smart, humane, effective strategies for crime reduction and offender rehabilitation.

Boudin is a fascinating figure whose backstory has been told so many times it may have become too familiar. His mother, Kathy Boudin, was a member of the radical Weather Underground and took part in a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck that killed three people. She spent 22 years in prison. His father, David Gilbert, served 40 years in prison for participating in the same crime.

That means their son spent most of his childhood and young adulthood wandering in and out of prisons to visit them, even as he became a lawyer, public defender, and then prosecutor. He believes that

are

“lived experience” helps him bridge the gap between the real world and what is being discussed by lawmakers in Sacramento.

Boudin was recalled from his job as a prosecutor by voters who, in my opinion, did not give him enough opportunities. Let’s see if he and the new Berkeley Law center can be useful

data and innovative

policy recommendations

that will

Stop

the pendulum and make police and prosecution more just.

@nick_goldberg