Progressive prosecutors under fire across the country

As an Illinois jury found actor Jussie Smollett guilty of faking a racist and homophobic attack on himself, attention quickly turned to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the prosecutor who tried to let him off easy.

Politically speaking, she’s not alone. Foxx is one of the most prominent members of a controversial movement labeled “progressive prosecutors.”

Anger and frustration over crime, policing and racial justice issues have brought a new and often-controversial type of prosecutor to office. Unlike the old-school prosecutors who promise tough-on-crime policies that stress convictions and incarceration, the new reformers campaign on both public safety and reducing mass incarceration.

They tend to prefer such alternative punishments as treatment programs for drug-related crimes, reduced prosecution of low-level crimes and diversion to mental health treatment, counseling, employment, education and substance abuse programs, particularly for juveniles.

Also prominent among these prosecutors is Larry Krasner, who was elected Philadelphia district attorney in 2017 and featured this year in the PBS documentary “Philly D.A.”

Another is Chesa Boudin, San Francisco district attorney, who learned about prison as a child visiting his parents, Weather Underground radicals Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, in prison.

“Your personal strength and commitment to reforming and improving the criminal justice system is a testament to the person you are and the role model you will continue to be for so many,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a congratulatory video after his victory.

But you don’t run for this controversial of an office in order to make friends. At best, the reception for Boudin, Foxx and other progressives has been mixed, partly because of such unforeseen circumstances as the pandemic, the nationwide surge in violent crimes in recent years and a political backlash from those who see police and prosecutors relaxing their policies at a time when even liberals and communities of color have been calling for tougher law enforcement.

In San Francisco, where

tourists too often have been replaced by more break-ins, car thefts, pup tents and assaults, particularly against the Asian elderly, Boudin already faces a recall election.

That doesn’t mean he’ll be ousted. But it doesn’t make his job any easier.

In Philadelphia, Krasner experienced a jolting one-man backlash from a fellow Democrat, former Mayor Michael Nutter, after making what Krasner apologetically admitted was a gaffe. Responding to reporters’ questions about rising crime in the city, Krasner said, “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.”

In a blistering open letter in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nutter wrote, “It takes a certain audacity of ignorance and white privilege to say that right now.”

After citing the more than 521 people slain so far this year at that point, the most since 1960, Nutter’s letter said, “I have to wonder what kind of messed up world of white wokeness Krasner is living in to have so little regard for human lives lost, many of them Black and brown, while he advances his own national profile as a progressive district attorney.”

This sounded to me like a backhanded reference to a long-running source of Black resentment: ill-conceived policies and practices that too often are imposed with the best of intentions on Black communities by outsiders who don’t have to live with the consequences. That’s how I felt and still feel about the dumb slogan “Defund the Police.”

In these changing times, it’s not easy to follow the Goldilocks Rule — not too hard, not too soft — but it’s necessary.