The Opportunity in Crisis: How 2020's Challenges Present New Opportunities for Prosecutors

By Chesa Boudin   

As San Francisco District Attorney, I was elected in late 2019 on an ambitious platform focused on ending mass incarceration and decreasing  racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Little did I imagine that my first year in office would bring an acute national focus to the exact issues on which I had campaigned. Two phenomena have, thus far, largely defined the year 2020. First, the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to have a grossly disparate impact on communities of color2 and on those living and working in prisons and jails. Second, a national Black Lives Matter movement grew in response to the murder of George Floyd—potentially the largest national movement in U.S. history—demanding police accountability and criminal justice reform with a focus on racial equity. The nation’s collective response to these developments—how the country navigates an unprecedented national health crisis and an unprecedented protest movement—will have lasting implications for myriad aspects of American life, including the criminal justice system. COVID-19 and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement created a tremendous impetus for wide-ranging criminal justice reform, including decarceration and police accountability. Although some criminal justice jurisdictions have actively resisted change, and others have simply been unprepared for it, San Francisco was ready. After all, San Francisco voters had just elected me on explicit promises to deliver many of the reforms now in the national spotlight, and we were changemaking   

110 J. Crim. L. & Criminology Online 23 (2020).