(Headline USA) Disgraced former San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, who was booted from the job by voters over his soft-on-crime policies, announced that he will be leading a new criminal justice center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law this year.
In an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, Boudin said he had been named executive director of the school’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, which is why he will not be seeking public office next year.
“In my new role, just as I did as district attorney, I will continue to draw on networks of advocates, activists, judges and legal practitioners to support reform and advance safety in ways that are rigorous, principled and responsive to the lived experiences of directly impacted communities,” he wrote.
“The center will systematically evaluate the outcomes of specific policies and communicate to the public which policy changes are essential to enhancing public safety and justice.”
Boudin claimed “electoral politics” will “only take the criminal justice reform movement so far.”
“Winning a few big elections” — which he failed to do during voters’ recall effort — “isn’t enough, on its own, to create lasting change,” he claimed. “I learned a lot while in office, including that how people feel often matters more than data and facts.”
Boudin was voted out of office last year during a recall election. In the op-ed, Boudin claimed criticism of his policies was due to the “sensationalistic media” who turned public safety into a “manufactured frenzy.”
He also lamented the rollback of soft-on-crime policies across the country.
“In New York state, officials rolled back pretrial release reforms for poor people who can’t afford bail. Meanwhile, despite widespread claims about being defunded, police budgets across the country surged without any demands for accountability,” Boudin gaslighted.
“Even in liberal San Francisco, the mayor’s office closed a supervised drug consumption site while ratcheting up policing of drug users with results as predictable as they are tragic: The city is suffering its most fatal year of overdoses on record, by far.”
