Brooke Jenkins calls herself a progressive prosecutor. Should we believe her?
Justin Phillips
July 17, 2022
During interim San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’
swearing-in ceremony on July 8, applause erupted after she said she planned to “restore the accountability and the consequences that have been lost in the criminal justice system in San Francisco.”
Jenkins softened her tone toward the end of the ceremony with a request: “I ask that you give ... a chance to get to know me and what my vision is for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and for San Francisco.”
One week into her new job, Jenkins’ public pledges, a policy position and her first personnel decisions are offering glimpses at that vision and the kind of district attorney she plans to be:
Someone willing to bring back cash bail, charge juveniles as adults, revoke plea deals that could keep immigrants from being deported, and support expanding police surveillance, all to make sure San Franciscans feel safe.
Jenkins was once a prosecutor in Chesa Boudin’s office and a supporter of some of his early work. In 2020, according to The Chronicle, Jenkins emailed Boudin to express her “love” for the
post-conviction unit he created. Jenkins
left Boudin’s office in October, frustrated over his anti-carceral policies, and played a
prominent role in the successful recall campaign against him.
As is common for a new district attorney, Jenkins has started
firing staffers who worked under Boudin — including the chief attorney who oversaw the post-conviction unit she previously praised — and has hired four people to lead her management and transition teams. As The Chronicle reported, some of the hires butted heads with the previous administration.
It was Boudin’s office in 2020 that eliminated cash bail, which reinforces the racial biases in police stops and arrests. Instead, his office used
public risk-based assessments to determine who to keep incarcerated before trial. According to a national report by the
Prison Policy Initiative in 2019. “Black and brown defendants are at least 10-25% more likely ... to have to pay money bail,” and the amounts are “twice as high as bail set for white defendants.”
Boudin’s office also stopped the use of three relics of California’s tough-on-crime era: charging minors as adults, the “three strikes” law and gang enhancements. Based on The Chronicle’s
reporting of state prison data, 92% of the inmates serving sentences with a gang enhancement were either Black or Latino in August 2019. Never mind that these disparities are fueled by biased California gang laws created to target people of color. Meanwhile, the draconian “three strikes” law, which increased punishment for repeat offenders, never had a demonstrable impact on
reducing violent crime, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
California’s criminal legal system didn’t pack prisons overnight. It did it systematically through the 1980s and 1990s with discriminatory policies, culminating with a prison overcrowding crisis that California is still digging out from under today. Jenkins said she wants to make these policies the pillars of her administration, while telling outlets such as the New York Times that her office will be “extremely thoughtful” in how it uses them.
In an interview with
The Chronicle, Jenkins touched on the intersectionality of her own identity, being Black and Latina, while discussing her approach to handling drug cases involving immigrants. She said in the dozen of cases she’s reviewing from under Boudin where a plea was offered to keep someone from being deported, it’s possible her prosecutors could rip up the deal.
“My father is not a citizen of the United States; he’s from El Salvador,” Jenkins told The Chronicle. “So this is a very sensitive issue for me and something that will be considered. But we have to still have accountability in some form or fashion.”
Jenkins also submitted a letter to the Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee supporting legislation that would expand law enforcement’s ability to tap into the live feeds of privately owned security cameras throughout the city, even to investigate a misdemeanor. The city’s current ordinance, which was put in place in 2019, doesn’t allow such access.
The San Francisco Police Department has been
accused in the past of violating the existing ordinance, and a recent
poll commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California showed the 60% of San Francisco residents opposed expanding access to private cameras.
While Jenkins suggested that expanding police’s surveillance powers could facilitate investigations into police misconduct, her letter was more about how the amended legislation “can help address the existence of open-air drug markets” in the city and “send a message to those scheming to prey on our city that there will be consequences for their actions.”
Jenkins asked the public for time to understand her vision for San Francisco. Slowly, one is emerging. It’s just hard to believe a self-described progressive prosecutor is behind it.
In her first week as D.A., Brooke Jenkins gave the public clues about the kind of top...
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