NEW YORK, NY – The Marshall Project released a short retrospective at the end of 2024, highlighting the massive swing in public perception against “progressive prosecutors,” seen largely as those who seek to reform the criminal justice system.
These prosecutors, with the label catching on quickly, refers to progressive district attorneys who “challenge the traditional ‘tough-on-crime’ approaches of their predecessors” and “seek to reduce their jurisdiction’s reliance on mass incarceration,” notes The Marshall Project.
Proponents of prosecutorial reforms argued the old approach “perpetuated mass incarceration and the racial disparities in our legal system,” according to the Vera Institute of Justice.
As of Dec. 2024, media outlets report the tenures of both George Gascón (Los Angeles County) and Pamela Price (Alameda County) are coming to their ends after losing the reelection and recall vote, respectively.
The Marshall Project suggested the losses sparked speculation among activists about whether or not the “progressive reform” movement for the incarceration system will also meet its demise.
“Progressive prosecutors offered a different path,” Lakeida Chavis from The Marshall Project wrote, adding, “One guided by minimizing and correcting past harms.”
“Both officials were flawed, and both recall efforts were funded by a group of wealthy hedge fund managers, tech elites, and real estate investors who claimed to be concerned about crime,” wrote commentator and reporter Radley Balko about Gascón and Price.
Balko added the voters’ political affiliations likely played a big role in these races, and noted that progressive prosecutors won in places where they weren’t targeted by “wealthy right-wing donors.”
“Corporate retailers harked on about retail theft,” Chavis from The Marshall Project commented, supplementing Balko’s argument.
The Marshall Project also listed examples of areas not influenced by the conservative wealthy to support Balko’s claim: Lake County, Illinois, and Albany County, New York.
“One of the key takeaways of the 2024 election cycle may be that voters have learned a key lesson from recent history. When it came to progressive policies, they went along to get along — until the results hit them, hard and fast,” concluded Rafael A. Mangual from the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, urging Democrats to take more moderate positions.
However, this opinion change did not happen overnight, as Stanford Law Professor David A. Sklansky wrote in 2017 about the shift.
“There seemed to be an unwritten law: Tougher is always better. And then, with remarkable speed, the unwritten law ceased to operate,” said Sklansky.
Since the conception of reforming prosecutorial practices, critics have always been on the offense with “persistent, aggressive attacks,” accusing progressive prosecutors as “‘woke,’ anti-police, and a threat to ‘safe and secure communities,’” according to The Marshall Project.
Chavis insists even staffers resisted and rebuked the prosecutors’ “reformist ideals.”
In 2016, Kim Foxx overtook the “longtime tough-on-crime” incumbent in Cook County’s office (in Illinois), the country’s second-largest local prosecutorial office, and reduced “unnecessary” prosecutions for non-violent, low-level offenses like retail theft, reported Matt Daniels from The Marshall Project.
In 2017, Philadelphia residents elected Larry Krasner, who had a history of suing the city’s police department and city hall as a civil rights and defense attorney, according to the Philly Mag.
In 2020, after Gascón was elected to the Los Angeles District Attorney Office, he moved to end the state death penalty, as well as “curtailing the use of cash bail for low-level crimes” and “reviewing cases that involved excessive sentences” with newly-established resentencing units, reported Chavis.
While most vocal critics had been the politically-savvy, public perception turned en masse against progressive prosecutors since the COVID-19 pandemic, when it marked a “turning point” in a country where “most people feel strongly about crime and, increasingly, say that efforts to curtail it aren’t tough enough,” cited the Pew Research Center and Gallup News.
“Progressive prosecutors became a popular scapegoat — even as numerous studies concluded that they have little influence on violent crime rates and that the role is inherently reactive,” Chavis wrote, citing a 2024 report from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
In 2022, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Andrew Warren, the lead prosecutor of Hillsborough County (including Tampa), according to The Marshall Project.
DeSantis called the progressive prosecutor movement a “pathogen.” The following year he suspended another prosecutor, Monique Worrell, “for being too soft on crime,” reported the Florida Phoenix.
The Appeal said Warren was among several prosecutors, including San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, whose roles had been threatened by recalls, investigations and attempts to limit their powers.
In 2022, Chesa Boudin was also recalled by voters, noted The Marshall Project.
Since 2023, a report collaborated between the Public Rights Project, Fair and Just Prosecution, and Vera revealed that more than a dozen states have introduced bills — some successfully — to curtail top prosecutorial powers.
“State preemption of prosecutorial discretion undermines public safety, local democracy, and civil rights,” the report’s introduction stated.
“The efforts to limit prosecutorial discretion represent a blind push toward carceral responses to crime, ignoring substantial evidence that a less punitive approach can better promote public safety,” according to the report.
In 2023, Mark Gonzalez from Nueces County, Texas resigned after facing accusations of “gross carelessness” and “gross ignorance” of his job duties as a pushback by local conservatives, said The Marshall Project.
However, some disagree that the prosecutor reform movement has yet to see its end, including Rachel Marshall, executive director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College, who writes that questioning whether the recent election marks the end of progressive prosecutors “fundamentally misreads what is happening” around the U.S.
Marshall pointed out that, despite Gov. DeSantis’ interference, Worrell won reelection in Florida. Among other notable progressive prosecutors who were reelected, she noted Krasner’s enduring tenure in Philadelphia, who is also reportedly running for a third term.
Illinois prosecutor Foxx from Illinois, however, did not seek reelection since her term in 2016 and she ended her second term in Dec. 2024, according to media outlets, and The Marshall Project reports she will be succeeded by a Democrat former judge and prosecutor who “ran on a tough-on-crime platform.”
“The policies were different than anything we had done before. And I think any time you’re trying to do a new innovation, there will be pushback,” Foxx told WBEZ in Chicago NPR’s station when reflecting on being the first Black woman to lead the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and how her identity played into the criticisms she received.
“Some of it was related to my race and my gender. I know that because I read the hate mail. I saw the Proud Boys march on my office with the (Fraternal Order of Police),” Foxx continued.
Foxx’s successor, Eileen O’Neill Burke, reassured voters during her victory speech that they “don’t have to choose between safety or justice” and “can have both with the right leadership.”
However, The Marshall Project revealed Burke plans on undoing the very first policy decision Foxx made when she was elected to office nearly a decade ago, by “lowering the threshold for prosecuting people accused of low-level retail theft with felonies.”
