The Progressive Prosecutor: Rising or Falling?

Berkeley Law Professor Rebecca Goldstein has completed the first nationwide empirical study of progressive prosecutors as political leaders, gaining access to their ideas and motivations and assessing as much as possible the outcomes. She will be joined in conversation on her findings with Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon, the Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, whose 2007 book Governing through Crime, pointed to prosecutors as the key political change leaders in the nation’s generation-long “war on crime”.

Criminal justice researchers have long viewed elected local prosecutors (the overwhelming norm in the US) as the dominant figures in criminal justice policy making. The recent wave of elections in major cities, like Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, of self identified “progressives” to the office, raised hopes of many that major reforms were at hand. Others, alarmed by these new voices from the law enforcement side of the criminal legal system, have promoted counter-campaigns, including recalls. But almost a decade into the movement, what does this “progressive prosecutor” really signify and what impact do they have on the areas they have come to power in?

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