Gascon met significant resistance both within and outside the District Attorney’s Office since announcing his instruction to prosecutors to stop seeking the enhancements, which can add years to prison terms for some defendants, including ex-felons or gang members, or those who committed hate crimes or violence against police.
In a letter addressed to the community and released Friday afternoon, Gascon said that his office would seek sentencing enhancements only in hate crimes, crimes against children and the elderly, and other crimes that meet certain criteria.
The new policy comes after extensive discussions with crime victims, their advocates, members of the community and career prosecutors in his office, the county’s top prosecutor said.
“Nearly all of the concerns I have heard center around my policy of ending all enhancements,” Gascon wrote. “To be responsive to your input, I have decided to make some adjustments to my initial directives.”
The amended policy addresses concerns raised by vulnerable victims — children, the elderly and groups that are targeted because of their actual or perceived race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender or mental or physical disability.
The office, however, will continue with its policy to cease seeking gang and other sentencing enhancements, including those made available to prosecutors by California’s 1994 “three strikes” law. There are more than 100 enhancements in California’s penal code.
“Over-incarceration — the practice of sending people to jails and prisons for too long — does not enhance safety,” the district attorney said shortly after being sworn into office on Dec. 7. “It actually hurts our safety.” He called gang and other sentencing enhancements “a principal driver of mass incarceration.”
“They are outdated, incoherent and applied unfairly,” Gascon said. “Plus, no compelling evidence exists that they improve public safety.”
Research indicates that people who serve excessive sentences are more likely than those who serve proportional sentences with a rehabilitative or restorative purpose to commit crimes when they are returned to the community, creating more victims in the future, according to the D.A.’s office.
Gascon said that tough-on-crime policies of the past “undermine rehabilitation, exacerbate racial and other inequities in our justice system and they decimate families and communities. They also are crowding jails and prisons and exacerbating the COVID pandemic behind bars.”
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Diana says
Just another reason why I moved out of CA. Remember, vote Democrat,,,, keep the train wreck going!
DA says
The most dangerous man in the Lost Angeles area.
Gasconman says
“They also are crowding jails and prisons and exacerbating the COVID pandemic behind bars.”
That should be his least problem.
surfside 6 says
Too many dumb asinine laws to begin with! Each time a new law is passed 3 old laws should be scraped. And 3/4 of all lawmakers should be terminally dismissed! Lawmakers kill freedom and have been central to almost all of history’s civil wars.