Q&A: L.A. District Attorney Runoff Candidate George Gascón Shares His Progressive Plan
Interview by: Emily Branan
Days after the March election, it looked like District Attorney Jackie Lacey would maintain her role as L.A.’s DA. But weeks later, Lacey lost her 50%-plus-one lead which she needed to outright win. This forced Lacey into a November runoff with the runner up, former San Francisco DA, George Gascón. The Advocate interviewed Gascón to learn more about what he thinks a modern system of justice looks like.
Q: What should the community know about how you will run the L.A. DA’s office compared to the current DA, and what would that mean for California’s criminal justice system moving forward?
Gascón: “There are several things that would be different. Number one, we are going to take a more science and data-based approach to our work, which will help us identify how to enhance public safety while reducing incarceration. You are going to see a very different approach to mental health. We are going to be working with mental health experts and we’re going to continue to develop existing resources for mental health programs, and seeing where we need to add additional ones.
We’re going to start [indeterminable] Prop 47 money, as well as other funding that may come from the state this year and develop the level of services that may be needed in other parts of the county that currently do not have the services. Another thing that you would see if that we’d be stopping use of the death penalty, so we would no longer exercise the death penalty as the current DA does. Additionally, we would be taking a very aggressive look at environmental polluters. In the L.A. county, we have a huge problem with environmental justice, we have primarily communities of color and poor communities in the county that are being heavily impacted by industrial polluters and there has been very little action by the current DA.
Also, you will see a renewed, well not a renewed, but a new emphasis on dealing with sexual assault cases and predators that we have seen over and over again not being addressed by the current district attorney because they come from people who are contributors to her campaign or people who come from very powerful places in our community, at the expense of many, many women. We have seen people not only like Weinstein, but we have the Cosby case, and we have seen other cases where we have dozens of victims from the same predator and this office has not paid attention to it.
Finally, you’re going to see a very different approach to juvenile justice. The current DA exercises the capacity to prosecute juveniles as adults regularly and I don’t believe that the science supports that. We now know that the human brain is not fully developed until we are somewhere in our mid-twenties and yet she continues to prosecute 16- and 17-year-olds as adults. That will stop.
There will be an increase in the use of restorative justice. We started a very, very successful restorative justice model in San Francisco for 18 and under and we were on the path to bringing that to the 18 to 25 years of age. We also started a young adult court in San Francisco for ages 18 to 25, which is a collaborative process. Those are initiatives that will be coming to play very, very quickly.
Also, there is a huge morale problem inside the office, especially when it comes to sexual harassment issues. I’ve had now, many primarily women, district attorneys that have been sexually harassed, and when they’ve raised the issue to the office, they get retaliated against and removed, so we are going to have to take a very aggressive look at how do we fix the internal problems, especially those concerning retaliation and sexual harassment.
Finally, one of the problems in L.A. county, because it’s the largest county in the country, is that there is a huge lack of uniformity throughout the system, in the outcomes the office offers defendants. Sometimes, markedly different outcomes for exactly the same behavior with the same set of circumstances. In one end of the county, somebody may get probation; in the other end of the county, somebody could end up in state prison. Obviously, that doesn’t work. So, bring in a better understanding of the problem to ensure we have uniformity and bring in more humanity to our work as well as addressing the mental health epidemic that we have, which is an opportunity to intervene. Which by the way is contributing to the homelessness problem in this county. Addressing the death penalty and using data and science in more aggressive ways in order to inform our work.”
Q: Recently, Justice Liu criticized the use of deception in obtaining confessions from suspects who have invoked their right to remain silent and specifically called out the use of Perkins agents. Nevada has banned the use of Perkins agents, and Orange County prosecutors have a policy against it. If elected as L.A. D.A., what will be your policy on the use of Perkins agents?
Gascón: “Yeah, we would stop the use of that. We will also address status enhancements that consistently, not only have been proven to over-incarcerate people, but we have seen in L.A. County actually the problems with young people fraudulently being placed in gang databases so those are things that will be addressed. We will also create a no-call list, which the current DA refused to do to ensure that law enforcement officers that have a history of lying or deception will not be admitted as witnesses in our cases.”
Q: DAs across California are challenging the constitutionality of the felony murder rule. What’s your take?
Gascón: “I want to make sure because the California District Attorneys Association has actually wanted to keep the felony murder rule the way it was before. I am against that. So, I just wanted to be really clear. I don’t think that we need to continue to use the felony murder rule the way it has been used in the past. And I think that we’re better off accepting the reform and moving forward.”
Q: Shortly after you left S.F., the newly-elected DA announced they are no longer going to ask for cash bail for defendants for pretrial release. Do you think what S.F. did was the right step? What are your plans for cash bail?
Gascón: “We started on the journey. I was the first district attorney in the state and probably one of the few in the country in 2012 to say that we needed to get rid of cash bail. And we began the process of moving forward to get rid of cash bail. San Francisco, in the following four or five years, we dropped the use of cash bail significantly. We increased our pretrial release. I think the natural progression of that journey is what the current district attorney is doing and we will be evaluating similar steps here in L.A. county.”
Q: Between 2018 and 2019, there was a 16 percent increase in LA’s homeless population. As the next DA, what are your plans to work with the city to address this problem?
Gascón: “One of the contributing factors of homelessness in L.A. has been the posture of the current district attorney. They have often criminalized very low-level behavior by people that are poor who have no safety net that causes them to lose their employment and then they become homeless. So, the first thing that we need to do is to make sure that the criminal justice system is not contributing to homelessness. The second step we have to take is to work and use opportunities when they present themselves in order to show that we provide the right levels of intervention and prevent crime from coming across our front door with behavior that is driven by mental health, substance abuse, and poverty, and use those opportunities for interventions that use other tools than jailing them, which is what is currently happening.”
Q: Anything else to add?
Gascón: “Look, I think the really important point that we’re trying to make here is that criminal justice reform and public safety actually work well together. In fact, when we don’t, and when we continue the old ways of the mass incarceration era, what we do is we actually create more crime. L.A. county, under the current leadership, has experienced about a 30 percent, a little more than 30 percent increase in violent crime in the county and somewhere around mid-40 percent increase in violent crime in the city of L.A. Clearly the approach to mass incarceration that this county has taken hasn’t worked and it is important that we start moving away from that and start providing for greater community”