10 ms·

Unpopular opinion, but I actually appreciate enjoying a constitutional right to free movement, and would hate to lose it to yet another "public safety" emergenc

Unpopular opinion, but I actually appreciate enjoying a constitutional right to free movement, and would hate to lose it to yet another "public safety" emergency. SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. For them to claim they can't do their job without giving themselves essentially *administrative* powers over peoples' lives, I think that's a false and stupid dichotomy.

wahern 5y ago
> SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. Thus the gambit by the city attorney, who handles the city's civil administrative matters. The SF district attorney finally published statistics on case disposition. He's long been claiming that his case prosecution rate (as judged by the filing of charges) remains high and comparable to his predecessors. (Note that his immediate predecessor, Gascon, was perhaps the 2nd most liberal district attorney in the country.) But that says nothing about case disposition. It turns out that, as suspected, the percentage of cases resulting in jail time have dramatically dropped over his tenure. In particular, the percentage of criminal cases shunted into pretrial diversion programs has nearly doubled under his tenure. 43% of criminal cases are diverted. But things could be even worse than that because 1) for convictions we don't have metrics on punishments and sentencing, which by most accounts have been significantly softened, and 2) the data says "successful diversion", yet all numbers add up to 100%, so we can either assume that "non-successful" diversions end in convictions, or the definition of "success" is extremely loose. Also note that because diversions don't result in convictions they have less weight on subsequent charges--particularly less weight under this city attorney, by most accounts. To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform narrative. If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time. Just another manifestation of a classic American dynamic, I guess. Neither the people nor their institutions are very good at modulating their behavior--it's all or nothing with us.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. To the extent that's true, the solution is to replace the DA. The DA not prosecuting the way other city leaders would like does not empower those leaders to assume dictatorial power and impose arbitrary punishment without due process.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    surely at this point the problem runs deeper than just a single DA, and it's safe to assume that the entire government apparatus as a whole is rotten with corruption? you really think that just replacing one single public servant is going to cause any kind of dramatic shift for things over there?
  - wahern 5y ago
    I agree the most appropriate solution to this particular aspect of the problem is to replace the DA. The recall is actually scheduled for next month, but the city attorney initially sought these injunctions over 18 months ago. I was addressing what seemed like a point of confusion regarding the roles of the district attorney and city attorney, and providing some context regarding how things are playing out. I don't think any official in the city wants to bring back 1980's LA-style gang injunctions. But the district attorney is an elected, independent office whose policies are exacerbating an already extreme situation. He simply will not budge, and the mayor believes it would be counterproductive to use the city's purse strings to "punish" the office financially. While Boudin can't be faulted for all the contributive policy problems, over 1300 people have died from drug overdoses over the past two years (his tenure began January 2020) and the rate is increasing. It's a humanitarian crisis with a legitimately astonishing body count which city hall is trying to get a handle on despite the Board of Supervisors' political paralysis and denial, and the District Attorney's counterproductive, ideologically extreme policies. It's a rare, extreme situation where it's not hyperbole to say that practical matters of life-and-death are bumping up against abstract principles. And it should go without saying that it's not helpful to point out that "the city" (as an abstract entity) is reaping what it sowed. The city is slowly coming to that realization, and unwinding those horrible policies to the extent it can will take time, especially in the context of democratic governance, while in the meantime the body count is accelerating. In such situations it's not uncommon for the law to give some temporary allowance for dealing with exigent, extreme situations with clear outcomes that are undeniably horrible (i.e. it's not a matter of, say, racking up a monetary debt for bad finances, or losing a few prosecutions--we're talking daily deaths). And in that sense the strategy of seeking injunctions isn't as objectionable as it might seem on its face. We should be careful about applying a national policy lens on a very local matter. The folly and hubris of applying abstract, nationally-framed narratives to local matters is part of how city ended up in the situation it has.

wahern 5y ago

> SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. Thus the gambit by the city attorney, who handles the city's civil administrative matters. The SF district attorney finally published statistics on case disposition. He's long been claiming that his case prosecution rate (as judged by the filing of charges) remains high and comparable to his predecessors. (Note that his immediate predecessor, Gascon, was perhaps the 2nd most liberal district attorney in the country.) But that says nothing about case disposition. It turns out that, as suspected, the percentage of cases resulting in jail time have dramatically dropped over his tenure. In particular, the percentage of criminal cases shunted into pretrial diversion programs has nearly doubled under his tenure. 43% of criminal cases are diverted. But things could be even worse than that because 1) for convictions we don't have metrics on punishments and sentencing, which by most accounts have been significantly softened, and 2) the data says "successful diversion", yet all numbers add up to 100%, so we can either assume that "non-successful" diversions end in convictions, or the definition of "success" is extremely loose. Also note that because diversions don't result in convictions they have less weight on subsequent charges--particularly less weight under this city attorney, by most accounts. To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform narrative. If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time. Just another manifestation of a classic American dynamic, I guess. Neither the people nor their institutions are very good at modulating their behavior--it's all or nothing with us.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. To the extent that's true, the solution is to replace the DA. The DA not prosecuting the way other city leaders would like does not empower those leaders to assume dictatorial power and impose arbitrary punishment without due process.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  surely at this point the problem runs deeper than just a single DA, and it's safe to assume that the entire government apparatus as a whole is rotten with corruption? you really think that just replacing one single public servant is going to cause any kind of dramatic shift for things over there?
- wahern 5y ago
  I agree the most appropriate solution to this particular aspect of the problem is to replace the DA. The recall is actually scheduled for next month, but the city attorney initially sought these injunctions over 18 months ago. I was addressing what seemed like a point of confusion regarding the roles of the district attorney and city attorney, and providing some context regarding how things are playing out. I don't think any official in the city wants to bring back 1980's LA-style gang injunctions. But the district attorney is an elected, independent office whose policies are exacerbating an already extreme situation. He simply will not budge, and the mayor believes it would be counterproductive to use the city's purse strings to "punish" the office financially. While Boudin can't be faulted for all the contributive policy problems, over 1300 people have died from drug overdoses over the past two years (his tenure began January 2020) and the rate is increasing. It's a humanitarian crisis with a legitimately astonishing body count which city hall is trying to get a handle on despite the Board of Supervisors' political paralysis and denial, and the District Attorney's counterproductive, ideologically extreme policies. It's a rare, extreme situation where it's not hyperbole to say that practical matters of life-and-death are bumping up against abstract principles. And it should go without saying that it's not helpful to point out that "the city" (as an abstract entity) is reaping what it sowed. The city is slowly coming to that realization, and unwinding those horrible policies to the extent it can will take time, especially in the context of democratic governance, while in the meantime the body count is accelerating. In such situations it's not uncommon for the law to give some temporary allowance for dealing with exigent, extreme situations with clear outcomes that are undeniably horrible (i.e. it's not a matter of, say, racking up a monetary debt for bad finances, or losing a few prosecutions--we're talking daily deaths). And in that sense the strategy of seeking injunctions isn't as objectionable as it might seem on its face. We should be careful about applying a national policy lens on a very local matter. The folly and hubris of applying abstract, nationally-framed narratives to local matters is part of how city ended up in the situation it has.