Academic

California County Stops Prosecuting Minor Crimes. Supposedly.

By Dan Filler

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Contra Costa County, located outside of San Francisco, is going to severly cut back on prosecution of smaller criminal offenses:

Misdemeanors such as assaults, thefts and burglaries will no longer be prosecuted in Contra Costa County because of budget cuts, the county's top prosecutor said Tuesday. District Attorney Robert Kochly also said that beginning May 4, his office will no longer prosecute felony drug cases involving smaller amounts of narcotics. That means anyone caught with less than a gram of methamphetamine or cocaine, less than 0.5 grams of heroin and fewer than five pills of ecstasy, OxyContin or Vicodin won't be charged. People who are suspected of misdemeanor drug crimes, break minor traffic laws, shoplift, trespass or commit misdemeanor vandalism will also be in the clear. Those crimes won't be prosecuted, either.

I get the point of this announcement - making some political hay - but I don't buy it.  Local voters will never an official policy of crime toleration within the county.  And the total elimination of prosecution of offenses like shoplifting might lead to a serious rise in certain crimes crime - or, I suppose, soaring rates of vigilante justice.  Still, it is probably true that when prosecutors lose large chunks of their budgets, they'll have to use their discretion a bit more critically.  And I'm not sure that's a bad thing.  We've become a bit too comfortable churning offenders through the criminal justice system. 

This all sounds a bit like the inverse of Darryl Brown's piece, Rationing Criminal Defense Entitlements: An Argument from Institutional Design.  Here, funding necessities may result in society rationing enforcement, rather than rights.

H/T WSJ Law Blog

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).