Santa Clara DA Threatens Public to Preserve Prosecutor’s Budget in a Time of Historic County Deficit

Editor’s Note: In the face of a $470 million county deficit, the Santa Clara County DA’s office is making their case to avoid cuts to their budget. In his plea, DA Rosen equated his office to the concept of justice itself. Raj Jayadev explains how the reality is just the opposite.

Facing an unprecedented county deficit, Santa Clara County DA Rosen made an ominous premonition to warn against proposed budget cuts to his office. He said:

"Public safety costs money. Justice is expensive. Money is finite. There is less money. And so, there will be less justice. Please listen carefully: there will be less safety.”

For prosecutors, this must have sounded like a bar.

He followed his axiom with rhetorical questions of what would happen if the DA Office had to absorb cuts: “Will people get hurt? Will they be killed? … I don’t know,” he said.

And how exactly does that work? How does budget cuts which are being carried by every agency in county equate to danger, even death apparently, if it touches the DA’s office?

The warnings DA Rosen is speaking of is a possible $19 million dollar reduction in the coming year. For context, the county already agreed to a $185 million net appropriation this year, up $177 million from the prior year according to the San Jose Spotlight. That budget is more than double of its counterweight, the public defender’s office. As the DA office was afforded a larger budget this year, the Public Defender’s Office had to cut 10 positions.

The reality is, stripped of the hyperbolic fear-mongering, it is the District Attorney’s Office that is “expensive.” And the less money they receive doesn’t mean less safety, it means more money for county obligations that directly address the conditions and drivers of crime to begin with. Funding mental health keeps the public safe, housing keeps the public safe, investments in community health, youth development, keeps the public safe. To fund these county services is to invest in solutions that prevent crime.

If anything, the function of a DA’s office is a reaction to what happens if a county divests in these foundational services. There is nothing preventative about a prosecution of an alleged crime after it has occurred.

And this activity - prosecution - creates exponential costs beyond the budget of the office itself - it is a cost multiplier. A prosecution of a criminal court case requires other actors - court staff, other law enforcement agencies like probation departments, defense attorneys, that cost money to the county. Incarcerating someone in the county jail costs money. A person needing county assistance after the destabilizing impact of an incarceration through social services, hospitals, emergency housing - costs the county money. An investment in the DA Office is to commit to exponential, and intractable, costs.

To double down on his threat of what would happen to the community if the DA’s budget were to have to take cuts, DA Rosen says features of his office like drug and mental health diversion “will be gone. No more.”

But those diversion alternatives are offramps to criminal prosecution, pathways away from his office. The entire premise of them is that issues like mental health or substance use should not be addressed through the criminal legal system and incarceration, but rather through treatment -- public health and behavioral health supports.  

That the DA would no longer be able to be a conduit to non-carceral programming, isn’t a threat, it is admission that the “finite” resources should fund those programs directly in the first place. Why fund a prosecutor’s office to essentially get out of the way?

DA Rosen’s attempt to scare the county into preserving their bloated treasure chest at a time when the community is suffering from lay-offs, houselessness, unanswered healthcare and social service needs, is wildly self-absorbed.

So to the contrary, less of the “finite money” to the DA’s office may actually lead to more justice for a community in struggle.