The “black box” of the court

Activists in this coalition see the criminal court as a “gateway” between police and prisons, mediating the path between arrest and incarceration, community supervision, or release. However, despite the crucial role that the court plays in the criminal legal process, activists also describe it as a “black box,” which is hidden from public attention and relatively overlooked by social movements. Luis,Footnote ¹⁰ a Latino man and formerly incarcerated organizer, explains: “People are doing stuff at the front end with the policing issue and with the mass incarceration issue to change things on the back end. … So there was a huge need in the middle, which was the court process. That part has been left largely unattended.” Activists explain that courts are a black box because the public often has little understanding of how they work, in part because courts are shrouded in technical legal language and procedures. Olivia, a system-impacted Latina organizer, expands on this point:

Activists see the black box nature of the court as a problem because it allows the court to obscure how it functions as an unjust institution under the shroud of legality.

One dimension of injustice described by activists is the court’s reproduction of broader systems of race and class oppression. Carlos, a Latino formerly incarcerated organizer, shares:

Luis explains that courts play a key role in this system of social control, exclusion, and exploitation by “overprosecuting, overcharging, and oversentencing young Black and Brown people.” Some activists see these practices as stemming in part from what Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve (Reference Van Cleve2016) refers to as the racial segregation between an “all-white cast” of court officials and the people of color “consumers of criminal justice.” Abel, a Black policy advocate, reflects on this stark image:

Further, activists argue that courts produce unequal punishment not only in formal outcomes but also through the criminal case process itself. Abel states: “They keep you in jail. Your bail is set super high. You can’t get out fast enough. Your car is towed. You lose your job. You lose custody of your children, even if you’re innocent and you win your case. You have already lost so much, so you lose even when you win.” As Feeley (Reference Feeley1979) also discussed, they stress the collateral consequences that defendants face, particularly those detained pretrial because they do not have the resources to make bail.

However, activists see the court’s injustices as going deeper than its reproduction of inequalities, which could ostensibly be addressed through reforms to improve fairness. On a deeper ideological level, activists call into question the common idea of courts as arbiters of justice that redress harm. Layla, a law student activist, explains the problems with the adversarial system:

To these activists, punishment does not prevent or redress harm. In fact, it works counter to those goals. The fact-finding process focuses narrowly on determining guilt and assigning punishment, while neglecting the messier work of acknowledging the nuanced dynamics of harm and trying to repair it. Max, an Asian American system-impacted organizer, echoes a common refrain in activist circles: “Harmful institutions beget harmful people. People who cause harm have often been harmed before, whether by other people or conditions created by these systems.”

In sum, by portraying courts as reproducing race and class inequality, activists counter the hegemonic idea of courts as neutral arbiters of justice. Importantly, activists not only problematize how courts unfairly or imperfectly administer justice but also challenge the taken-for-granted idea that harm can be addressed and justice can be achieved through the criminal court process. In doing so, they begin to reduce the ideological power of the court.

“The eyes of the community”

Activists use court watch to try and unveil the black box of the court, thus revealing how it reproduces inequality and inflicts harm. Sofia, a Latina system-impacted organizer, shares:

While Sofia expresses concern about due process, she makes clear that the goals of court watch are broader than legal compliance. For these activists, exercising the right to observe court is the means to an end, not the end itself. They use court watch as an avenue to develop an understanding of how the court works, uncover its injustices, and pressure court officials to be less punitive.

The court watch program began in 2018 when, due to a lack of data collection and sharing by court agencies, coalition activists took the task of documenting court proceedings into their own hands. In the summer of 2020, with the onset of the pandemic, they shifted to observing online hearings. Over the first two years of the pandemic, court watch focused on arraignments to monitor whether courts were adhering to the emergency bail schedule (that is, “zero bail”) or detaining people pretrial as COVID rates were spiking in the county jail. Before the first pandemic court watch, the coalition posted on social media—likening the Black Panthers’ cop watch as a way to protect the community from police violence to court watch as a way to protect the community from “cops with suits”—that is, prosecutors. Here, the activists make clear their strategic inspiration and apply the Panthers’ countersurveillance tactic in a new site of the criminal legal system: the court.

For many court watchers who lack formal legal training, the technical aspects of the court process are confusing at first. This confusion was compounded while courts struggled to transition to remote hearings in the early pandemic. The morning of the coalition’s first online court watch session was marked by delays and technical difficulties—one of the courtroom’s livestreams was not working, and another was silent. Court watchers spent half an hour troubleshooting together before everyone was able to access the livestreams. Once arraignments started, the court launched into a whirlwind of cases as the judge and attorneys rattled off legal jargon in rapid-fire exchanges before setting bail for one case and immediately moving onto the next. During the hearings, court watchers texted the group with clarifying questions about certain legal terms, googled penal codes together, and voiced concerns about the difficulties of court watching in the COVID era.

While court watch training sessions include primers on legal terminology and instructions on how to access the court calendar and attend remote hearings, court watchers actually develop a practical sense of how courts work through watching hearings and processing their observations with one another in post-court watch meetings. Emily, a Latina organizer, describes this learning process: “Everything was going by so fast. I didn’t know how to read the court calendar or what they meant by OR, FTA, or med scratch. I had to ask [a lawyer in the coalition], ‘What does that mean?’ But slowly, I started to get there.” By pulling back the shroud of legal language and procedure, activists can more clearly identify how courts reproduce inequalities. For example, one court watcher describes the economic injustice of a case where an unhoused person was charged with looting for taking toothpaste from a drugstore the day after it was broken into, despite being uninvolved in the initial break-in. Another identifies racial injustice in a case where a public defender requested zero bail for an older Black defendant who would face serious health risks in a COVID-ridden jail. However, the prosecutor recommended a bail of fifty thousand dollars because of the man’s decades-old criminal record and failures to appear, which they argued made him a public safety risk. Activists saw these practices as putting low-income people of color at increased risk of not only incarceration but also illness or even death.Footnote ¹¹

Activists share these observations with various audiences to show what happens in courts day to day and to mobilize system change. Through public-facing reports, social media posts, and community events, activists raise public consciousness around the court as an unjust institution and highlight specific, actionable demands for community members to organize around, such as decline-to-charge policies and increased diversion programs. They also present these findings directly to the DA and PD to support their policy recommendations, like ensuring the consistent use of emergency bail and reducing barriers to accessing online court hearings. Finally, activists share court watch findings with activist groups in other jurisdictions, compare patterns in their courts’ practices, and swap insights about how to build community power in the court process.

In addition to documenting the racialized and classed dynamics in court, activists uncover issues with the adversarial system. During a court watch session of a sexual assault trial, I observed a public defender ask the victim about details of the assault. “I don’t remember, it was seven years ago,” she said, frustrated, tears rolling down her face. The prosecutor went up for a redirect: “How does it feel to read your statement, what does it represent?” The woman responded, voice breaking: “A terrible thing that happened in my life.” Later, the public defender pointed to holes in her story and her job as a sex worker in an apparent effort to discredit her. She started sobbing. “Slow down your breathing, would you like to take a break?” the judge asked, his concerned eyes peeking over a black mask. But not even thirty seconds later, he instructed the public defender to continue. After this line of questioning, one court watcher told the group: “This is a tough case to listen in on. Got me thinking how there’s so many other transformative ways to address this type of harm, and this system just ain’t it.” Many of these activists do not believe in retribution, but they recognize that accountability requires acknowledging and grappling with harm in a way that enables healing both for the person harmed and the person who caused harm—something the existing system does not allow.

Finally, court watchers engage in what Shannon Malone Gonzalez and Faith Deckard (Reference Gonzalez and Deckard2022) call “witnessing” or a form of countersurveillance used to de-escalate state violence and promote accountability. Jess, a white law student activist, explains: “There’s a lot of pressure on [court officials] knowing that there’s people in there keeping an eye on what they’re doing. We try and put pressure on them to change.” I saw the power of witnessing when a group of about twenty activists gathered for a court watch action before the start of the pandemic. For months, they had been following the case of a deputy sheriff who illegally recorded conversations between youth and their attorneys. Their goal was to pressure the judge to hold the sheriff accountable, rather than give him “a slap on the wrist.” They invited me to join them, and, as we filled in two rows of the courtroom gallery, the attorneys glanced back at us and whispered to each other. When the hearing was pushed to a later date, the group stood up in unison and walked out silently, followed closely by the eyes of everyone else in the room. Afterwards, the group huddled in a circle in the hallway to debrief. A lead organizer glanced around quickly—to check if any attorneys or judges were around—before offering her reflections: “I don’t think the judge realized we were all there for the case until we walked out together and he saw how many of us there were. That matters. Let’s double our numbers next time.”

Despite the symbolic power of actions like this one, the concrete impact of court watch is difficult to assess. Thousands of cases go unobserved, and it is hard to measure whether activists’ presence in courtrooms, especially online, is noticed by court officials and affects their behavior. Still, activists look to other jurisdictions with more established court watch programs to see what impact is possible. For example, an organizer from another court watch program explained that it took them fifteen years to build credibility, gain access to court data, mobilize public pressure, and hold court officials accountable for punitive practices (for example, filing a lawsuit against the DA for prosecuting victims who refused to testify). In part, having this sort of blueprint for a path forward motivates activists to continue in their struggle. There are also tensions in leveraging “objective” court watch data to render the “subjective” experiences of system-involved people more legitimate to the court and the public. Activists risk reproducing the rising valorization of data in criminal justice, which scholars and activists have criticized for legitimizing harmful practices (Klingele Reference Klingele2015; Schenwar and Law Reference Schenwar and Law2021). But while activists strategically leverage data to support their critiques of the court, they do not privilege this form of knowledge over the lived experience of system-impacted people.

Ultimately, court watch transforms the legal space of open court into a site of collective contestation. Here, activists accrue knowledge about how the court works, document and publicize its injustices, and use their watchful presence to pressure court officials to be less punitive. In this repurposed legal site, activists work to reduce the power of the court to obscure its injustices from the public and increase their own power to demand system change.

“Stripping away humanity”

Activists view the court as problematic not only for its role as a black box that obscures systemic injustices but also for the ways in which it isolates and dehumanizes defendants on an individual level. Jada, a Black system-impacted organizer, describes the common experience of defendants going through the court process alone: “Seeing defendants really out there on their own, especially when they’re in custody. You always see them look out into the audience, see the disappointment when they don’t see a familiar face.” The intimidation of navigating an unfamiliar institution is amplified by the emotional weight of facing a high-stakes situation without any support. But even when defendants have family by their side, the court process can feel isolating and overwhelming. Olivia reflects on her experience when her father was arrested: “I wanted to protect my family, but I didn’t have the means or avenue to do so. … I realized how powerless and hopeless I felt at that moment.” Like Olivia, many people want to help their loved ones get through the court process safely, but they lack the knowledge, capacity, or sense of efficacy to do so in the face of such a powerful institution. Further, while trying to help, defendants’ family members often also become subject to the court’s subjugating force, similar to what Megan Comfort (Reference Comfort2008) calls “secondary prisonization.”

In part, defendants and their families feel alone navigating the court process because they lack sufficient support from their defense attorneys. Activists explain that this problem stems from the structural disadvantage of public defenders relative to prosecutors. Among other issues, they explain that public defenders have higher caseloads, fewer resources, and less access to evidence than prosecutors, who also have closer ties to law enforcement. At a town hall with the chief PD, someone asked about funding disparities between the PD and DA offices. PD Brendon Woods replied in an impassioned tone: “Imagine if this office was funded the same way as the prosecutor’s office, it would be revolutionary! Give me more social workers, more immigration staff. We could change criminal justice in Alameda County. Start funding the group that will end mass incarceration!” But without these types of structural changes, activists see public defenders as lacking the capacity to offer the personalized support and close guidance that defendants and their families seek.

Besides the material issue of insufficient institutional support for defendants, activists note a deeper ideological issue with the court. They see the retributive mode of justice as unjust because it pathologizes crime and dehumanizes those who engage in it. Jada expresses this concern:

Dehumanization emerges in part from the bureaucratic nature of the court as legal officials plow through huge caseloads and treat defendants as the sum of their case details. Layla explains that law students are trained to assess criminal cases through narrow legal frameworks that “strip away the humanity and stories behind each case, divorced from root issues.” The dehumanizing effect of courts also derives from correctional logics, which understand crime as the product of individual deficiencies. Activists critique court officials for failing to consider structural issues that lead to crime in the first place (for example, lack of secure housing, employment, mental health care). Steven, a formerly incarcerated Asian American organizer, states: “Many of them don’t understand why people of color and low-income people are funneled into their system. … You can’t punish these people for the system that has been designed to make them fail.”

To conclude, activists show that, despite the right to counsel and fair trial, defendants often go through court without sufficient support. Further, they unpack the implicit logics of the criminal court process, which, by focusing narrowly on the facts of a case, can dehumanize defendants and take their actions and lives out of a broader social context. By exposing these gaps between legal ideals and lived realities of the case process, activists challenge the legitimacy of the court.

“Half tactical exchange, half support group”

Activists counter the isolating, dehumanizing power of the court by embedding defendants and their families in networks of support. Participatory defense is an organizing model “for people facing charges, their families, and communities to impact the outcomes of cases and transform the landscape of power in the court system.”Footnote ¹² Antoine, a Black formerly incarcerated organizer, reflects on this strategy:

By creating a space for defendants’ families to navigate the court process together, participatory defense fosters strong bonds between system-impacted people, equips them with tools to advocate for their loved ones before the court, and contributes to legal defense strategies. Where court watch aims to raise public consciousness about systemic inequalities in court practices and mobilize community members around decarceral demands, participatory defense aims to shift how system-impacted families think about the court process. It helps them challenge the idea that their loved one is defined by their charges or that they have little power over the criminal case process. Instead, it mobilizes families toward advocacy for their loved one’s freedom and, for some, toward broader efforts to transform the criminal legal system.

At the Oakland participatory defense hub (“the hub”), which was founded in 2018, up to a dozen family members attend each weekly meeting and are able to receive support for as long as their case lasts. Target outcomes include dropped charges and enhancements, diversion, or resentencing, all which aim to secure people’s immediate freedom from incarceration. While the hub supports cases in the initial adjudication and post-conviction stages, Luis discusses the urgency of intervening early in the criminal legal process at the “gateway” between arrest and incarceration: “If you work with somebody after the fact, sometimes it’s too late, in the sense that if they’re already convicted, it closes a lot more doors. The options, the avenues to bring a loved one home are a lot less.” Activists describe the hub as “half tactical exchanges, half support group.” On the tactical side, hub participants provide case updates, and hub coordinators help answer questions, review legal documents, and attend court hearings with them. A key tactic is creating a “social bio packet,” a collection of letters and photos in support of a defendant from their family and friends. As with character letters in a mitigation package, a social bio packet offers the court a more holistic image of a defendant than simply what is in their case file, thereby humanizing and situating them in a broader social context.

But rather than being compiled by the defense attorney, social bio packet creation is spearheaded by the defendant’s loved ones, with support from hub coordinators. In contrast to character letters written by individuals who may not know what to include or how to frame their statements given their unfamiliarity with the format, social bio packets are collectively constructed and draw on years of experience of the coordinators and other families in the hub. Loved ones learn how to strategically bring together materials and perspectives to tell a clear and compelling story about their loved one that supports the defense’s arguments to dismiss charges, reduce sentences, request diversion, or other goals. While social bio packets can be shared with public defenders to support their mitigation work, or even sometimes presented in court (for example, in sentencing hearings), activists also present the packets directly to the DA in an avenue outside of the formal case process.

In a meeting with the DA, I observed nearly a dozen people take the floor to advocate for their loved one who was seeking resentencing. They spoke about his personal growth while in prison, shared photos of the children for whom he has been a caring father, and explained how they would support him upon release. A family friend would bring her skills as a trauma therapist to provide emotional support, a pastor who worked with a group of formerly incarcerated people would bring social support, another family friend would use her expertise as a professor to support the defendant in his educational pursuits, a grassroots reentry organization would help him search for job opportunities, and a restorative justice organization would commit to holding a healing and accountability circle. The restorative justice organizer concluded: “You know the proverb that it takes a village? We will be that village and provide the ongoing moral, material, and emotional support necessary for reentry. One important part of this approach is that the safety net is broader. There will always be someone there to support him, he will never be alone.” The hub coordinator thanked everyone for sharing their testimonies: “Y’all are a true example of what community looks like, especially when we need to support our loved ones.”

On the support side of participatory defense, the hub serves as a space of connection for people who might otherwise be going through the case process alone. In one hub meeting, a woman gave updates about her son who was seeking resentencing. She and the hub coordinators discussed next steps for putting together a social bio packet, and the coordinators shared their insights from previous experiences advocating for the resentencing of hub participants. The mother stayed afterwards, even though she did not have any more questions, and reflected: “I like to hear what others have thought of, that I haven’t, so I can learn from them. It makes me feel like I’m not the only one going through this. I felt like I was being closed in on, like I wasn’t doing enough, but we can talk about that here.” A hub coordinator affirmed: “You’re not alone, we’re glad you come.”

At the participatory defense hub, participants receive support not only from coordinators but also from one another. Besides swapping tactical insights, they share feelings of frustration and fear while fighting a case or joy and relief when loved ones return home. Some continue coming to the hub even after their loved one’s case is resolved in order to pay forward the support they received. By fostering new types of social relations and institutions centered on collective care, participatory defense enacts what abolitionists call “prefigurative politics” in that it begins to “incrementally realize the changed world that we want to live in” (McLeod Reference McLeod2018, 1623).

The support that families receive through participatory defense is crucial when they do not have sufficient guidance from their overburdened public defenders. While the hub is not formally partnered with the PD’s office, some attorneys refer clients to the hub. At a participatory defense training session, nearly eighty public defenders were in attendance. One public defender shared how he integrated participatory defense into his legal strategy: “Partnering with clients’ community is so helpful for getting better outcomes for folks. We have a lot of cases, so it’s hard to know how to do this with every one of them. But if a family is actively advocating for their loved one, that should trigger a referral to the hub.” He and the hub coordinators described several cases in which the participatory defense hub and public defenders worked together to get charges dropped, secure alternatives to incarceration, or negotiate early release. As the public defender stated, “when we work together, the outcomes are better than otherwise possible.” At the end of the session, the hub coordinators explained how public defenders could refer their clients to the hub, and attendees sent enthusiastic messages in the chat: “What fantastic results!!” “This was galvanizing!” “Absolutely amazing stories, free them all!”

While they may make referrals, attorneys do not attend hub meetings, and their involvement in participatory defense is more akin to what Scott Cummings (Reference Cummings2017) calls “movement lawyering” than legal mobilization or legal service provision. In fact, hub coordinators begin each meeting with a disclaimer that centers on system-impacted peoples’ perspectives and agency in participatory defense: “We know the criminal legal system can be stressful and confusing, but we’re here for support, not legal advice. We’re organizers, not attorneys. We want to be thought partners and empower you to take the lead in advocating for your loved one’s freedom.” Forty hubs across the national participatory defense network proudly claim that, over ten years, they have achieved a total “time saved” of 25,869 years of incarceration.Footnote ¹³ Although participatory defense helps reduce harms caused by the penal system to the many families it supports, its impact is limited since it operates on a case-by-case basis and can only support a small segment of people going through the court process. There are also situations where family members’ visions of justice and ideal case outcomes differ from those of activists. At a participatory defense training session, a hub coordinator explained:

Although activists may have different goals than family members (for example, pursuing case dismissal versus negotiating a plea), they adhere to a core principle of participatory defense—that the strategy is family centered and led—rather than imposing their own visions of justice. Finally, participatory defense also poses potential tradeoffs between material gain (for example, securing shorter sentences) and ideological concession (for example, using legible frames of deservingness). While activists believe it is crucial to humanize system-involved people, some note that there is a tension in tying someone’s worthiness of non-punitive treatment to their level of social support. Further, many defendants do not have the social ties to leverage a participatory defense strategy. But, in an abolitionist vision of justice, they should not be punished either. Jess reflects on this tension:

Like Jess, many abolitionists have grappled with the idea of balancing immediate needs for harm reduction and longer-term goals of structural change. But many activists in this coalition see the risks of incarceration, especially during the pandemic, as being too high to ignore for the sake of ideological purity. As in court watch, activists strategically engage with institutional logics to advance their goals of getting people out of prison but without reifying them.

In sum, participatory defense fills in gaps in legal defense by creating a new space outside the court where families can navigate the case process together. Further, the tactic of compiling social bio packets turns a legal practice (mitigation packets) into an organizing strategy, over which community members, rather than court officials, have power and agency. Through this new support system, activists work to reduce the court’s power to isolate and dehumanize defendants and their families and increase their power to advocate for less punitive case outcomes.

“The gatekeepers”

While activists aim to unveil the black box of the criminal court as a whole, they shine the brightest spotlight on the DA, who they understand to be the most powerful player in the court and at the center of many problems with the court. That is, the black box nature of the court obscures how discretionary prosecutorial practices create race and class disparate outcomes, and prosecutors are often the ones who are dehumanizing and decontextualizing defendants in efforts to secure convictions. Even worse, prosecutors are able to perpetuate these injustices without accountability, particularly to system-impacted communities. Max explains the prosecutor’s power through an analogy:

Because prosecutors determine whether and how to charge, make plea offers, and recommend bail and sentences, activists see them as the gatekeepers to mass incarceration.

But without an avenue for the community to engage with the DA, critique their practices, and make demands for decriminalization or decarceration, it is unlikely that prosecutors will enact such changes on their own. Historically, in the county and nationally, DA-community engagement has been limited, despite the DA being an elected official who represents “The People” (Bazelon Reference Bazelon2020). Jada reflects on this contradiction: “You campaigned for this position, you really wanted it, you made promises to communities. You need to follow through, you’re obligated to community. Like, our safety and our lives are at stake in your hands.” While DAs claim to promote collective values like public safety and justice, coalition activists say that they do so without considering the perspectives of system-impacted communities. Olivia states:

Amy, a white activist, explains why she thinks this lack of DA accountability exists:

Here, as in studies by scholars like Angela J. Davis (Reference Davis2007), prosecutorial accountability through formal legal channels has historically been weak because of insufficient enforcement mechanisms.

In short, activists call attention to the fact that, despite their formal position as an elected official, the DA is not regularly engaged with, or accountable to, system-impacted communities. In this definitional and representational struggle, activists begin to undermine the ideological power of the DA, which is rooted in their claim to represent “The People.”

“Designing and setting the table”

However, more recently, activists have started turning public attention toward the injustices perpetuated by prosecutors and creating new modes of accountability. While participatory defense disrupts the path from arrest to incarceration on a case-by-case basis, DA accountability aims to change how the court processes entire categories of cases. In 2018, Alameda County DA Nancy O’Malley was up for reelection and faced a challenger: Pamela Price, a Black, system-impacted, civil rights lawyer vocally committed to social justice. The coalition saw this as an opportunity for change in the DA’s office and launched a political education campaign. Using community outreach and townhalls, they worked to increase public awareness of the DA’s power, discretion, and role in mass incarceration, and stressed the importance of voting in the election. When O’Malley won, activists accepted that they would have to work with her for the next four years. They created a DA accountability program, which would continue political education efforts and begin holding community meetings with the DA. Two to three dozen people attend each monthly meeting where they bring together individual-level stories from participatory defense and system-level analyses from court watch to push forth decarceral prosecutorial policies.

The origin story of DA meetings is an organizational legend. Initially, the DA repeatedly ignored the coalition’s requests to meet until a group of youth organizers marched into her office and asked to speak with her. When her secretary said she was not available, the group staged a sit-in, chanting and refusing to leave until they got a meeting. Soon after, the DA appeared and met with them. Isa, a Latina system-impacted organizer recounts: “There were students like me who had experiences [with the criminal legal system], even formerly incarcerated themselves. It was powerful to be able to share our stories and say why we were there. From then on, she was very consistent in [meeting] with us.” Here, the traditional extralegal tactic of direct action paves the way for creating a new avenue to engage with the DA. Max explains the importance of this avenue:

Challenging what Steven Lukes (Reference Lukes1975) calls the second face of power—activists, not legal officials, run these meetings. As such, they open up space to voice concerns about ongoing injustices from the perspective of system-impacted people and present community-driven proposals to address them.

Monthly DA meetings include time for hub participants to advocate for their loved ones directly before the DA. Some activists believe that the best way to move the DA is through the moral power of narratives. Steven explains: “The heart of it is storytelling, the connectedness of humans. [The DA] is still a person, right? We’re appealing to their moral side. … I’m sharing my story as a gift, I want to connect with you on a human level.” During these testimonials, the DA listens, nods along intently, and smiles occasionally at touching anecdotes. While she does not explicitly commit to fulfilling requests, she often expresses gratitude for the chance to talk with families: “It’s helpful when families share a broader image of people than what’s on paper. I share this with others in the office. It’s been very helpful. We’ve been able to move forward on a lot.”

This narrative work extends beyond advocacy around individual cases and is also used to support policy recommendations, which activists also raise in meetings with the DA. On one occasion, activists gathered to reflect on their work over the first several months of the pandemic and develop priorities and plans moving forward. One person shared that inviting families to speak with the DA was effective: “On an individual level, that’s good, but there’s always more to fight for. Broader policy needs to change.” The group discussed using court watch data as an empirical basis for their claims and citing best practices in other jurisdictions to pressure the DA to change their policies. Another person chimed in: “A counterpart is narrative shifting to broader public and key stakeholders, telling powerful stories that highlight how cruel our justice system is and how much more effective it’d be to have community-based solutions.”

At the time of this study, the coalition was focused on eliminating status enhancements, ending youth transfers to the adult system, increasing diversion, and decarcerating jails and prisons during the pandemic. In a meeting with the DA, a policy advocate walked through a proposed policy to end gang enhancements. The DA replied: “I appreciate when you all put these [proposals] together. In the past, we’ve adapted our policies accordingly, but gang activity is a very serious issue in Alameda County, and I can’t give a blanket statement that we won’t pursue enhancements.” The advocate tactfully thanked her and continued: “I want to reiterate that there is no evidence that enhancements deter people from being in gangs. Our policy centers rehabilitation and bringing people home, not locking them up.” The DA cut in: “There are programs in prison that can help people separate from a gang.” A formerly incarcerated activist spoke up: “Going through a program isn’t the only way someone can drop out of a gang. I know, as someone incarcerated on gang enhancements. I hope your office doesn’t see that as a requirement.” In these meetings, activists speak in a language legible to the DA and use institutional paths like policy proposals to effect change. However, legal frames are always utilized alongside human-centered ones, like personal testimonies about the real-life implications of these policies, and in service of transformative goals.

As with court watch and participatory defense, it is difficult to assess the immediate effects of DA accountability. Some concrete policy changes emerged from the coalition’s efforts, like one requiring prosecutors to consider immigration consequences during plea bargaining. However, the DA rarely commits to amending policies and opts instead for boiler-plate responses that her team will “look into it” but “can’t make promises.” This raises the question of whether the DA is merely symbolically placating activists or actually considering their demands. Relatedly, activists vary in their views about prosecutors as levers for change. Some see the DA as functionally opposed to transformational goals because their central task is to charge and incarcerate. Jess states: “I don’t even believe in progressive prosecutors. I think the most progressive thing a prosecutor can do is quit. The thing for me is, at the end of the day, they wake up and incarcerate people.” Still, others hold that, while prosecutorial discretion is the mechanism by which raced and classed punishment is meted out, it can also be redirected in service of decarceration. Antoine explores this idea:

Again, activists regularly navigate tensions between engaging with legal institutions in order to push forth immediate decarceral goals and rejecting dominant logics and processes altogether. Still, these activists view the creation of a community-led space for engaging the DA, where there previously was none, as a crucial victory. As seen in social movements throughout US history, the creation of new institutions to hone collective power and build political efficacy is a fundamental step toward later material gains (Morris Reference Morris1984; McAdam Reference McAdam1999).

Leading up to the 2022 DA election—one of the most heated DA races in county history, with four final contenders—the coalition held town halls where constituents could ask the candidates about their policy stances and goals. In the end, voter turnout was a record high, and Price, the progressive challenger to O’Malley in 2018, won. Activists aimed to use the power they built through their work with O’Malley to push for more transformative changes during Price’s term. They began by creating a set of community priorities for the new DA, a similar tactic to the Panthers’ Ten-Point Platform. These included ending youth criminalization and sentence enhancements, declining to charge certain non-violent offenses, increasing diversion, and enforcing police accountability, all of which were aimed at decarceration and ending racialized punishment.Footnote ¹⁴

In sum, DA accountability uses the political process of DA elections as an opportunity for political education to increase public awareness of the role of the DA in mass incarceration. They also leverage the formal political role of the DA to create a new avenue for direct engagement. In this new avenue, activists try to reduce the power of the court to evade accountability to system-impacted communities and increase their collective power to shape prosecutorial policies.