- “The California Racial Justice Act (RJA) was designed to give public defenders a legal mechanism to confront racial bias and inequity that is deeply rooted in our criminal legal system.” – Ricardo D. Garcia, Los Angeles County Public Defender
- “Prop. 36 is straining the demand for drug treatment that is sorely needed across California and it is also tremendously increasing incarceration costs, which takes away from local governments’ ability to get the residents access to what they need.” – Claire Simonich, associate director of Vera California
- “It’s incomprehensible that D.A. Hochman is once again pursuing the death penalty in Los Angeles, the county that has sent more people to California’s now-defunct death row than any other in the state.” – Mike Farrell, president of Death Penalty Focus
A new report from the ACLU of Southern California evaluates Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s first year in office, concluding that despite campaign promises to pursue a centrist “hard middle,” his policies reflect a return to punitive practices that expand incarceration and erode racial justice protections.
The 11-page report, titled Los Angeles Deserves Better, outlines five areas where community groups say Hochman’s decisions have deepened public concern rather than restored trust in the criminal legal system.
Hochman campaigned on rejecting both decarceration and mass incarceration approaches that, in his words, are not “anchored in the facts and the law.”…