SF District Attorney's Office loses $3 million restorative justice grant

By the end of 2023, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office lost $3 million in potential restorative justice funding from the philanthropic foundation Crankstart, according to documents released through a public records request. Mission Local.

The foundation committed up to $6 million to fund a restorative justice program in San Francisco as part of a three-year grant launched under then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin. known as Improving Justice Initiative, It diverted people from prosecution by creating alternative forms of liability.

Crankstart is the personal foundation of billionaire Michael Moritz and his wife, novelist and sculptor Harriet Heyman. Moritz is a venture capitalist deeply concerned In San Francisco politics, to give or promise something $17 million to public pressure group TogetherSF and spending heavily to elect law-and-order mayoral candidate Mark Farrell.

The district attorney’s office accepts millions of dollars in outside donations from foundations and the state to fund a variety of programs, and Crankstart’s $6 million was its largest donation yet.

The program, run by the district attorney’s office and funded by Crankstart, was launched as a pilot project under Boudin but never fully realized. If both victims and perpetrators agreed, the criminals would apologize to their victims and take a series of monetary steps, such as paying restitution for a robbery or participating in programs usually overseen by a nonprofit organization. The program focused on adults and transitional youth between the ages of 18 and 24.

Under Boudin, the district attorney’s office hired staff and partnered with nonprofits to create referral staff. It received $1 million from Crankstart in 2020 to launch the program. The duration of the grant was for three years, from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2023.

But as soon as District Attorney Brooke Jenkins takes office in mid-2022 stopped All restorative justice referrals for adults. He said at the time that the move was temporary, but his office never resumed adult referrals. Many people close to the program said this was surprising because restorative justice programs have been shown to reduce recidivism and even tough-on-crime advocates see their value.

“It really slowed our work down. There were so many delays, so many points of indecision; it was really confusing,” said Sandra Rodriguez, a restorative justice program specialist at Impact Justice, one of the nonprofits selected to work with the district attorney’s office on the grant at the time. “It actually stopped completely when Brooke Jenkins took over.”

A lack of attention to restorative justice convinced Crankstart to halt funding, according to many people close to the program. On December 11, 2023, the district attorney’s office specifically requested an extension, citing Jenkins’ “support for restorative justice practices.”

However, Crankstart later informed the prosecutor’s office that he would not grant the extension. The DA’s office, which could have received up to $6 million for the program, effectively left half on the table.

Crankstart declined to explain why it stopped funding.

“We continue to believe in the power of restorative justice and the need to respond to the demands of communities when it comes to criminal justice reform,” said Jesse Hahnel, program director for criminal justice reform at the Crankstart Foundation.

prosecutor’s office, expressionHe pushed back on the claim that the move was slow and placed the blame on the Boudin administration. Jenkins’ office wrote that Boudin’s office “never implemented” the program and was slow to spend funds; Former Boudin-era employees and nonprofit partners said they acted quickly when Boudin is recalled in 2022.

“In recalling Chesa Boudin, voters gave me a clear mandate to put an end to his reckless social experiments that endanger public safety in service of a failed ideology,” Jenkins’ statement continued. restorative justice.”

The city still exists countless other diversion programs To avoid convictions and prison time, such as drug court and veterans court, both of which tie offenders to treatment or services. But restorative justice programs are different: They also allow offenders to avoid criminal charges, but only if they acknowledge their crimes to the victims and make amends. The name of the city’s only existing such program Do It Right Its construction started in 2013; Applies to offenders between the ages of 13 and 17.

But the Crankstart-funded program was the first restorative justice program focused on adult offenders who could avoid charges as long as they completed the steps of an accountability plan. More importantly, victims had to accept the program. Eligible crimes included felonies and high-level misdemeanors, but excluded violent crimes such as murder, sexual assault and rape, according to Boudin.

Angela Chan, assistant attorney general for the San Francisco public defender’s office, said: expression Jenkins’ reasoning for ending the program was wrong. The DA’s office “essentially killed” the restorative justice program by trying to narrow its scope to apply only to low-level charges, calling it “a hasty decision that harmed victims, our clients, and many communities.” These are organizations that hire staff and allocate time to the program.

Restorative justice programs have been shown to reduce rearrests. A. January 2024 survey Youth in the Make It Right program in San Francisco is run by the city and is partly Zellerbach Family FoundationThey were 44 percent less likely to be rearrested compared to those subject to traditional felony investigation. Another such program, the San Francisco Neighborhood Courts program, saw 90 percent of 24,000 cases between 2011 and 2021 completed successfully at no charge to the prosecutor, according to a 2022 prosecutorial memo.

A. 2023 surveyCiting a number of other studies, he noted double-digit reductions in recidivism in more than 20 such programs across the country. United Nations found Successful restorative justice programs in countries from Laos to Mexico.

“We hope that the DA’s office will continue to prioritize diverting people from the criminal justice system when it is in the interest of justice and community safety,” Crankstart’s Hahnel said.

The DA’s office lost at least two criminal justice reform grants under Jenkins. The MacArthur Foundation notified the office about this in August. Retaining $625,000 of the grant. this was to reduce the city’s prison population. The foundation noted a dramatic increase in the number of inmates in San Francisco and questioned the office’s commitment to reform; The DA’s office wrote that it “will not be used as a sharecropper of the Foundation’s vision for criminal justice reform.”

Diversions that allow individuals to have charges dismissed if they agree to alternative programs have decreased under Jenkins: 45 percent of all cases in 2022, the year Boudin leaves office, up from 37 percent so far this year. according to the prosecutor’s office. Meanwhile, the conviction rate increased from 36 percent of all cases to 44 percent in 2022. Jenkins reversed years of decline in convictions It started in 2016.

Convictions on the rise after a decade of decline

Since Brooke Jenkins became district attorney, the conviction rate has increased and the rate of diversion programs has decreased. Take a look at the rates of cases resolved with different results:

Prosecutor Boudin recalled:

Jenkins appointed

Prosecutor Boudin recalled:

Jenkins appointed

The painting belongs to Kelly Waldron. Data courtesy of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

Jenkins, who campaigned against his former boss Boudin before being appointed to the job by London Mayor Breed, appears to have reversed the reform focus in favor of traditional investigation. All police shootings in which Boudin blamed an officer Dismissed by Jenkins for example, within one year of his term of office. In conclusion, Dozens of staff left the officeHe says he is no longer focused on reform.

After the Crankstart grant was terminated, nonprofit partners were left scrambling. Rodriguez, then at Impact Justice, and Celi Tamayo-Lee of San Francisco Rising, another nonprofit partner, said their organizations hired staff in anticipation of running the program, only to have those funds disappear.

After nonprofits spoke out about the collapse of the grant, Crankstart stepped in and replenished funding by giving directly to nonprofits. “They made all the nonprofits as integrated as possible,” added David Mauroff, CEO of the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project, another nonprofit partner. “They really stepped up. “They didn’t have to do this.”

But the nonprofit’s planned work on adult cases has ended. While restorative justice is a “bipartisan issue,” according to Rodriguez, because of its effectiveness in reducing rearrest and recidivism, San Francisco’s experiment with expanding it to adults is over. “It’s like Brooke Jenkins’ office single-handedly took us back ten years.”

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