Thread by @CBHessick

Fascinating article about a California prosecutor’s noisy exit from the state prosecutors association.
A few things that are especially worth noting..... sfchronicle.com/crime/article/…

First, Salazar (the departing DA), says that the association has lost credibility with the CA legislature by opposing criminal justice reform & points to recent losses in the legislature as proof.

It's an interesting claim that these losses show a loss of influence by the association. But is it true?

To know, we'd need information about how successful the association has been at getting its way with the legislature in the past. But the article doesn't include this info.

I imagine the article didn't include this information because that information isn't readily available.
While we have come to understand that prosecutors associations spent a lot of time and effort lobbying state legislatures, not much information is available about those efforts

We have some good investigative reporting about prosecutors associations (here's one great example by @JessPish thenation.com/article/prosec…), but very little academic study.

@JessPish That's why @unc_law's Prosecutors and Politics Project launched a nationwide study of prosecutors associations. We are systematically gathering data about when these associations take a position on criminal justice legislation & what happens to those bills law.unc.edu/news/2019/09/p…

@JessPish @unc_law There's another passage in this article about California that deserves attentions -- it's the association's president (and Alameda Cty DA) Nancy O'Malley says that the association's legislative efforts aren't representative of their membership

@JessPish @unc_law Why is this important? The association lobbies the legislature on behalf of the elected DAs in the state. But if the lobbying isn't representative of those DAs--which the association's *president* says it is not--then legislators may be making decisions with incorrect information

@JessPish @unc_law Anecdotally, we know that some legislators will not vote for bills if the DA association opposes it. Those legislators don't want to pass legislation--especially reform legislation--if prosecutors tell them that it is bad for public safety, will make prosecuting cases harder, etc

@JessPish @unc_law But it sounds as though the association could be misleading legislators about criminal justice reform legislation. O'Malley seems to say that the association is representing the views of their most conservative members at the expense of the more progressive DAs

@JessPish @unc_law To be clear--this is almost certainly a function of how the association is organized.
Many organizations give each elected prosecutor a vote on issues. That might sound fair, until you think about how population is unevenly distributed w/in states (and thus among prosecutors).

@JessPish @unc_law In California, for example, the Los Angeles DA has approximately 10 million constituents. The Alpine County DA has barely more than a thousand.

Yet the LA DA and Alpine DA may have the same amount of control over the CA prosecutor association's policies -- one vote.

@JessPish @unc_law As we pointed out in the report we release on Thursday, there are LOTS of rural DAs law.unc.edu/wp-content/upl…
If urban DAs tend to favor reform and rural DAs don't, the rural DAs may have a control block in the association, thus ensuring that the association lobbies against reform

@JessPish @unc_law In any event, if you have an association that is supposed to represent all elected DAs, then perhaps you want it to run on a one-prosecutor-one-vote model.
But if you do adopt that organization, that raises serious questions for me about whether legislators ought to defer to it.

Addendum: @JessPish shares some interesting thoughts in this series of tweets

https://twitter.com/jesspish/status/1218615008982183937?s=21

https://twitter.com/jesspish/status/1218615008982183937