Earlier this month, voters in California rolled back a number of criminal justice reforms on the ballot. Los Angeles ousted District Attorney George Gascón, who had been elected on pledges to end cash bail and prioritize violent crime. San Francisco reelected District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who oversaw a spike in crime in her first year in office after replacing Chesa Boudin after his 2022 recall.

The conventional wisdom came together quickly: “Public safety” had won the day. Crime was up, and reforms were out. Initial takeaways from the results concluded that voters were getting “serious on crime” and proclaimed that the reform push was dead.

In Alameda County, California, the local prosecutor, Pamela Price, who had also pledged to end cash bail and let low-level offenses go uncharged, was ousted in her race — but not because of a huge spike in crime. Oakland, the most populous city in Alameda County, saw a 33 percent drop in homicides this year.

Contrary to the prevailing narrative, the fate of criminal justice reforms throughout the state is more complicated than it seems. California is experiencing historically low levels of crime statewide. Apart from the homicide spike that affected cities and rural areas around the country during the Covid-19 pandemic, crime in California has been relatively steady since the late 1990s.

It was a major shift. In recent years, California had been a bastion of reform. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure of death row at San Quentin State Prison. Legislators passed the Racial Justice Act in 2020, a landmark bill that made it easier to challenge criminal convictions based on evidence of racial bias. And, that same year, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure to radically transform the jail system and allocate funding to alternatives to incarceration.

So what changed? Voters had certainly been primed with sensational coverage of shoplifting sprees and horror stories blaming reform-minded DAs for letting offenders off the hook. And outsized spending from corporations, real estate interests, and tech investors helped opponents of reform get their message out.

Money, though, wasn’t the only factor in ousting Price and Gascón or leading voters to oppose abolishing slave labor in prisons, said........

© The Intercept