December 10, 2024

To Santa Clara County District Attorney Rosen,

 
On behalf of SV De-Bug and the over 70 diverse community organization signatories listed below, we are calling on your office to use your discretion to shield the community from the harm Proposition 36 is designed to impose on our people. As you know, the initiative, if implemented without critical protections, will further incarcerate the poor, those suffering from mental health and substance use issues, and disproportionately impact people of color in Santa Clara County.
 
While the damage of Proposition 36, through the depletion of needed resources for services, education, and treatments once saved by Proposition 47 funding streams extends beyond the scope of influence of the District Attorney’s Office, the punishment aspect of the initiative sits squarely in the wheelhouse of how prosecutors use their power.
 
You were one of the three prosecutors who had the foresight to support Proposition 47 in 2014. Your analysis as to the benefits of moving away from charging schemes that bolstered mass incarceration were proven true in the ensuing years. By reducing unnecessary penalties to low level charges, we witnessed a significant reduction in prison commitments, a decrease in the racial disproportionality in prisons, as well as decrease in recidivism. Proposition 36 was designed to take away these wins for the community, and brings us back to a path of over-incarceration. As you stated in the August 26th, 2024 Mercury News article, “Prop. 47 was responding to a number of things happening at the time, one of which was enormous prison overcrowding. We don’t want to build more prisons. Theft and drug addiction, let’s move those away from prison to other forms of accountability. We’re not going to punish our way out of drug addiction. We’ve tried it and it didn’t work.” Our community agrees with your position, and fortunately, even with the passage of Proposition 36, your office has the discretion to still move away from sending people for low level charges to prison or leveling them with unnecessary felonies.
 
Proposition 36 allows prosecutors to charge people with low level retail crimes and possession charges, (previously which were misdemeanors) as felonies that will expose them to prison sentences. But that punishment scheme only occurs if the prosecutors charge the person in the way as articulated in Proposition 36. Your office can use your discretion to avoid charges that trigger those convictions.
 
To take this approach in regards to Proposition 36 charges would also be consistent with the declarations you made in the Bend the Arc reforms. As you stated in the Internal Policies and Practices description, “The DAO will rewrite its formula for filing charges to give more weight to race and class issues.” In acknowledging the racial disparities of our carceral system you state, “When filing charges, we will ask ourselves ‘What SHOULD we charge, not what CAN we charge.” Proposition 36 will present a significant number of opportunities where this discernment around charging will have tremendous impact. According to Santa Clara County specific projections by the Californians for Safety and Justice, if left unchecked, Proposition 36 will result in:
∙       996 more residents of Santa Clara County in California's prisons and jails, 833 of whom would be incarcerated for charges related to drug possession.
∙       545 more people from Santa Clara County in prison within 3 years.
∙       2,392 additional pretrial admissions to Santa Clara County Jail each year.
∙       928 additional sentences to Santa Clara County Jail each year.
 
And your office has a particularly relevant charging policy that even predates the Bend the Arc initiative that is designed to mitigate harm to our immigrant brothers and sisters in your “collateral consequences” policy. The policy gave license to line prosecutors to change a charge from the original filing in order to not unfairly punish immigrant community members who face possible extra penalties in immigration court based on the criminal charge. Again, the dangers of Prop 36, turning misdemeanors to felonies, longer jail and prison commitments, absolutely will create disproportionate harm to immigrant community members who can face detention and deportation as a result of those charges, convictions, and sentences.
 
It is for these reasons, many of which you yourself have outlined as to your approach to prosecutorial discretion, as well as your positions stated about Proposition 36, that we believe our community can be protected from this mass incarceration initiative.
 
Thank you 

SIGNATORIES:

• ACLU of Northern California
• African American Community Service Agency 
• AM Party Rentals
• American Muslim Voice Foundation 
• Asian Law Alliance
• Bill Wilson Center
• Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet
• California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice
• Carry the Vision 
• Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County
• Coalition for Justice and Accountability 
• Colibri Collective
• Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice
• Community Health Partnership
• Community Peace and Justice
• Community Solutions
• Criminal Law & Justice Center
• De Anza College
• Democracy for America
• Dependency Advocacy Center
• Destination: Home
• Fair Chance Project/Families United to End LWOP - FUEL
• Felony Murder Elimination Project
• Fixin San Mateo County
• Fresh Lifelines for Youth 
• Human Agenda
• In Our Care San Mateo County
• Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley
• Initiate Justice Action
• Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity 
• Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley
• Latino Education Advancement Foundation
• Law Foundation of Silicon Valley
• Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area
• Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
• Lighthouse Silicon Valley
• MAIZ
• Mexican Heritage Plaza
• Neighborhood Hands (Neighborhoodhands.org)
• National Compadres Network 
• Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence
• Racial Equity Action Leadership (REAL) Coalition, a coalition of 50 nonprofit organizations
• San Francisco Peninsula People Power
• San Jose Conservation Corps
• San Jose Nikkei Resisters (SJNR)
• San Jose Peace & Justice Center
• San José State University Human Rights Institute
• San Jose/Silicon Valley NAACP
• San Mateo County Participatory Defense
• Santa Clara Valley Volunteer Chapter of the ACLU of Northern California
• Secure Justice
• Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network
• Showing Up for Racial Justice Santa Clara County
• Silicon Valley Bike Coalition
• Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits
• Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition
• Somos Mayfair
• South Bay Community Land Trust
• Stanford Students for County Advocacy
• Strength In Words LLC
• SURJ Santa Clara County 
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR-SFBA)
• Together We Stand
• UnCommon Law
• USF School of Law Racial Justice Clinic
• UUFRC Social Action Committee
• Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action, De Anza College
• Việt Unity Bay Area
• West Valley Community Services
• Wild Cat Consulting
• Young Women's Freedom Center
• Yu-Ai Kai Senior Service
• YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley

Link to PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_DK-itVQ5Xm3z5C-cKu3Eptu8u-Qi9sE/view