Chesa Boudin

“My family taught me radical politics from the beginning, but I also learned to prove myself in elite institutions.”

“Unlike many travel books I didn't set out to travel with the idea of writing a book in mind.”

“One of my priorities is giving victims the right to choose different paths to restoration and to healing. It's prioritizing having restitution available for economic harm, having victim services for the trauma and also recognizing that victims are far more than simply pieces of evidence to be used in order to secure a lengthy prison sentence.”

“Years now, decades, of visiting my parents behind bars taught me hard lessons about how broken the criminal justice system is - about how devoid of compassion it is. It's not healing the harm that victims experience. It's not rehabilitating people. And in many ways, it's making us less safe.”

“In San Francisco, I am proud to say that one of my first mandates as district attorney was that my staff would never ask the court to impose money bail. If we believe someone is too dangerous to be released, then it doesn't matter how wealthy they are - we should ask the court to detain them.”

“Reconciliation and forgiveness can actually help all of us move on in a healthier, happier way.”

“I want to give every victim of every crime in San Francisco the right to participate in restorative justice if they choose to.”

“All it takes is a single person coming into or going out of the jail or prison with COVID-19, and the entire jail will likely be infected. Most jails have people living in very close quarters.”

“In any campaign you make a lot of promises and you talk about a wide range of issues. When you're elected, the work of accomplishing those goals has to be sequenced. You can't do everything at once.”

“Different victims, different survivors of different crimes will choose to pursue different paths. And hopefully, over time, we can collectively transform our culture into one that prioritizes healing and prevention instead of simply focusing on punishment.”

“As a law-enforcement official, as a politician, you are always going to have in the back of your mind the fear that someone you release will end up committing another crime, potentially a serious crime, during a period when they otherwise would have been incarcerated.”

“The problem with money bail, for those who aren't familiar with it, is that it puts a price tag on freedom. It says to someone who is wealthy that no matter how dangerous you are, you can buy your way out.”

“Stop and frisk - whether done while walking down the street or while driving a car - is a civil rights violation.”

“My mother negotiated a plea deal, and my father went to trial. I think one thing we notice in their case that kind of stands out is how, in some ways, arbitrary the outcomes in the criminal justice system can be. And they did basically the same thing, identical thing.”

“My parents are all people who have taken a stand for what they believe in over and over again. That to me is a fine example - even if I disagreed with some of their choices.”

“The failure of both Congress and state legislatures to respond to the murder of George Floyd with any meaningful action reminds us that our nation's attempts at reform can often amount to nothing.”

“My father, David Gilbert, is in prison in New York. He is lucky that he has a single cell, not shared with another person. His cell is about eight feet by eight feet.”

“I've been really consistent throughout the campaign and since I won that I want to prioritize victims rights and I want to prioritize healing.”

“We need to do a better job identifying what's contributing to the crime and making sure we hold people accountable in a way that addresses that root cause.”

“We've been addicted to incarceration as a primary response for decades, whether or not it's a good use of resources, whether or not it's humane, whether or not it is effective at keeping us safe, rehabilitating or healing victims.”