California prosecutor seeks to reduce prison time through new sentencing policy

A district attorney in the Bay Area advised her office Wednesday to seek probation in most plea deals and only pursue sentencing enhancements in “extraordinary” circumstances.

An internal directive circulated by new Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, whose jurisdiction includes Oakland and Berkeley, instructed her staff that the changes will take effect on Monday, according to the memo obtained by the East Bay Times.

Treating probation as the “presumptive offer” for negotiating plea deals and asking prosecutors not to “file or require defendants [to] plead to sentence enhancements or other sentencing allegations” will become the office’s new standards, the memo reads.          

In a statement to the East Bay Times, the Alameda County DA’s office said, “This is not a top-down directive: our office is listening and working collectively to serve the people of Alameda County.”

Still, Ms. Price’s memo said that exceptions for harsher sentencing can be made for crimes of human trafficking, hate crimes, child or elder abuse and offenses that cause “extensive” physical injury — but only after receiving approval.

The standards are also retroactive, meaning that it will apply to cases sentenced in the past 120 days.

“This directive reduces reliance on sentencing enhancements and allegations as an effort to bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism,” Ms. Price wrote. “This new directive captures the District Attorney’s Office’s vision of justice for Alameda County.”

The new DA was elected in November on promises to address racial disparities and “disrupt the system,” according to crime news site The Berkeley Scanner.

“This is catastrophic to the safety of our community,” one DA’s office employee told the outlet. “What this does is get rid of anything that adds time beyond the base, core crime.”

Sentencing enhancements can be added to existing charges for things such as using a gun while carrying out a crime, if the offender has a gang affiliation or if the offender has prior strikes on their criminal record.

But those are being revisited by California as a state committee looking to update its penal code found that the enhancements are “applied disproportionately against people of color and people suffering from mental illness.”

Ms. Price came under fire in January for removing special circumstances charges against an accused killer who was charged with murdering two women, and with kidnapping and killing a young girl in a separate incident.