These apologia pieces keep repeating the statistic that Boudin prosecutes offenders at the same rate as his predecessors. But "prosecute" includes plea deals, including drug court referrals, short paroles, etc; and whether or not they're ultimately enforced. People hear "prosecute" and they think accountability. There's a background expectation that prosecutors seek to achieve some sort of deterrence effect as that's the way it always was.

But this is not what is happening. For example, dealers (including of lethal fentanyl) are being offered plea deals that send them to drug court, which is for addicts. They might not even show up, without repercussions. Sophisticated burglars being booked for their 3rd, 4th, 10th break-in walk immediately.

Boudin refuses to disclose statistics and details about his plea deals. Ostensibly this is because the trial courts don't track this data, previous DAs didn't disclose it, and so it would be unfair to him and to those taking plea deals. But we can look at trial rates. For the entirety of 2021 there have only been a handful of trials, drastically lower (~10x, IIRC) than even 2020 when the pandemic was much higher. Whereas for the previous decade the number of trials was relatively stable, particularly relatively to 2021 which is literally almost nothing. What this suggests empirically is that the plea deals Boudin is cutting heavily favor defendants, far more than his predecessors. Much of this is policy-based, but it's become clear that trials are also reduced because of sheer incompetence--Boudin fired most of the veteran prosecutors and replaced them with public defenders who have never prosecuted a case (this includes Boudin himself) and keep fumbling procedure. Suffice it to say that the scuttlebutt among criminal defense attorneys in the city strongly confirms all of this.

The recent spate of incidents involving absurd numbers of repeat offenses by the same criminal is not a coincidence. They're too numerous to recite here, but it's absurd to believe that they're anomalous.

Another aspect of all of this is that SF absolutely was increasingly having theft problems before. Over the past decade the city, like many other cities, has been increasingly lenient on drug-related offenders (e.g. addicts committing retail heft). Boudin's immediate successor extended that to dealers and other drug-related offenders and offenses.

Where Boudin stands out is that he's lenient across the board. He's opposed almost on principle to jail for any type of property crime. Except, of course, when an incident draws public attention, then he changes his tune and spins the facts. Because the bulk of offenses are indeed low-level stuff like street drugs and shoplifting, the change in treatment of more extreme offenses is hidden behind the statistics.

It's notable that most of these apologia, including this New Yorker piece, are authored by people who live thousands of miles away from the city. His political campaign is also receiving a ridiculous amount of outside money, too. These people seem to think, much like FOX News pundits, that what is playing out in SF is an extension of our national politics. Whereas in the city Boudin doesn't have many defenders remaining, even on the left. No amount of rhetoric and strawmen arguments can cover up what are, fundamentally, intolerable policies. Nobody disputes that we need to figure out how to deal better with drug and mental health issues. But a DA who simply presses the pause button on punishment while leaving it to everybody else to solve our social problems simply isn't doing a good job by any reasonable measure.