Gascón opposes the death penalty and has advocated against it. “We have a uniform message on the way we look at cases,” he said. “We are moving away from over- charging.” California’s criminal justice system is dysfunc- tional and is “overincarcerating people of color.”
Gascón supported the sit-lie measure and says that it has already helped by funneling people with mental health and drug problems into neighborhood courts. “It’s a tool we needed . . . to get people to services.”
Under Gascón, the office is centralizing criminal intake and seeking early resolutions by creating a risk assessment tool to objectively make offers. He also pointed to diver- sion programs for offenders with drug abuse and mental health issues. He suggests moving victim services into the community and he has taken strong positions on hate crimes and human trafficking by reaching out to vulner- able communities.
Gascón has increased training hours for prosecutors and staff, has formalized family leave and promotion policies, and is centralizing the department’s records. If elected in 2012, he would reach out to local technology companies to help improve the department’s outdated computer systems.
“I bring a long history of dealing with major problems and finding workable solutions,” Gascón concluded. “I have the experience of running large organizations and actually being able to deliver a product.”
David Onek has spent his ca- reer reforming the criminal jus- tice system, including stints as the founding executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, with Mayor Newsom’s Office of Criminal Justice, and as a police commissioner, where he fought to upgrade San Francisco’s CompStat system.
Onek earned his law degree at Stanford University School of Law and began his career as a staff attorney with Legal Services for Children in San Fran-
24 FALL 2011
cisco. He then became a senior program associate with the W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fair- ness and Equity. He was also a research associate at the National Council on Crime & Delinquency where he studied alternative approaches to incarceration.
“We have an overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system,” Onek said. He helped Santa Cruz County develop a nationally recognized model juvenile justice system along with community organizations, service providers, and law enforce- ment stakeholders.
Citing high recidivism, Onek said, “The criminal justice system is completely broken. It has bankrupted the state.”
He strongly opposes the death penalty and notes the $4 billion spent prosecuting those cases since 1978. Rather than convening a Special Circumstance Committee, he would pursue life without parole in the most egregious cases and “not go through a sham process.”
Onek did not support the marijuana legalization measure Proposition 19 in 2010. The failed measure “would have led to a county-by-county hodge-podge [of regulations].” Instead, he supports coordinated state and national ef- forts. He also voted against the sit-lie measure because it is “a political solution to a public safety issue,” he said. “That is never a good idea. You need to look at the under- lying substance abuse and mental health issues.”
If elected, Onek would seek out his close ties at Stanford and UC Berkeley to help the city analyze its data. “DA’s offices are usually black holes of data,” Onek said. “We need to break it down by race and ethnicity and change policies and practices based on that data.”
Onek doesn’t think the district attorney should be in court. “You need to have a vision for the office, manage the office, and work collaboratively,” he said.
“As district attorney, you can effect change on a much grander scale than just individual cases,” Onek conclud- ed. “We need someone who has worked with all the com- munity groups and sees the big picture. I’ve been doing that for twenty years.”
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