New DA in Los Angeles promises ‘hard middle approach’ amid a heightened sense of public disorder

By Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — A new top prosecutor for the nation’s largest county is taking office Monday with a promise to usher in a tougher-on-crime approach after Los Angeles voters took heightened anxiety over crime and public safety to the polls last month.

Nathan Hochman, a former Republican candidate for California attorney general and federal prosecutor, is the new district attorney for Los Angeles – one of the country’s most progressive cities. The 61-year-old lifelong Angeleno describes himself as a “centrist” and ran as a registered independent this year, vowing to both reject mass incarceration and to crack down on many of the progressive policies championed by incumbent George Gascón.

Gascón, known as the “Godfather” of progressive prosecutors, promised to enact a “more humane” criminal justice system when he was elected in 2020 amid a national criminal justice reform movement fueled by uprisings following George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis.

Hochman – who has attacked Gascón policies that he says led to increased crime – says he’s committed to bringing back prosecution for low-level, nonviolent crimes, restoring accountability and prioritizing public safety.

While homicides in Los Angeles were down last year, according to police, fears about crime persist as videos of smash-and-grab burglaries routinely go viral and more stores lock up their deodorant and toothpaste shelves. A poll released in August by researchers at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies shows 60% of likely Los Angeles County voters thought public safety declined in the previous three years, with only 5% saying it improved.

Hochman’s election suggests some of the momentum in the push for reform efforts has dissipated with the rightward shift in mood, as a large portion of the public believes stricter policies are necessary for public safety, experts told CNN. Progressive prosecutors are on their way out in several of the nation’s major cities after the recent general election, with voters in Oakland recalling Pamela Price, and Chicago’s Kim Foxx opting not to run for re-election.

Others, however, celebrated big wins in Orlando and Austin, aligning with reform-minded approaches mirrored by Price and Gascón, who both sought to reform harsh sentencing for low-level offenders, end mass incarceration and address racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

For Hochman, the plan is to balance effective criminal justice reform with prioritizing public safety.

“What we’re going to do is adopt a hard middle approach that doesn’t substitute one extreme policy … decarceration, with another extreme policy of mass incarceration,” Hochman told CNN. “I reject both extremes and I favor a hard middle approach.”

Still, criminal justice advocates are skeptical Hochman will embrace reform efforts while rolling out his “hard middle” agenda.

Some county public defenders fear their clients will spend much more time in jail under a Hochman administration, with an increase in misdemeanor and felony filings, along with sentencing enhancements, Garrett Miller, president of the Los Angeles Public Defenders’ union, told CNN.

Hochman says he wants to focus on deterrence – an approach that banks on the notion that a relatively few people are responsible for a disproportionate share of a community’s violent crime.

His message to criminals, he says, is not that he wants to fill prisons to the breaking point. “If anything, that’s a failure of the criminal justice system,” Hochman said. “I want to deter criminal conduct before it occurs, thus saving a whole lot of victims in the process.”

‘What voters want is action’

Perceptions among voters of a decline in public safety don’t necessarily mean voters want mass incarceration as a solution, said Anne Irwin, director and founder of Smart Justice California, a criminal justice advocacy organization.

“What voters want is action, but action that gets at the root causes of why people are committing crime,” she said.

In the years since Gascón took office, residents have harbored perceptions that his policies were soft on crime, resulting in a lack of accountability among criminals and a general permissiveness of quality-of-life crimes, according to experts on both sides of the political spectrum.

The outgoing district attorney and former San Francisco police chief faced two failed recall attempts during his four-year tenure.

Hochman points to data from the California Department of Justice that shows violent crimes in Los Angeles County increased by 12% in Gascón’s first three years in office, with property crimes and robberies also spiking.

While critics draw a straight line from Gascon’s progressive policies to increases in crime, analyzing what led to the surge is complicated. The rise in 2020 also mirrors a national trend in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic when much of the country saw such increases in crime.

Gascón has repeatedly defended his record as district attorney, emphasizing in a news release at the end of November that he “maintained or increased filing rates for violent crimes,” while shifting “misdemeanor priorities away from criminalizing public health issues.”

He pursued an agenda centered on reducing incarceration, with measures including a virtual prohibition on trying juveniles as adults, rejecting “enhancements” that extend sentence lengths and not prosecuting “quality of life” misdemeanors associated with homelessness.

CNN has reached out to Gascón’s representatives for comment but did not immediately hear back.

This year’s election results don’t represent a “wholesale repudiation of criminal justice reform,” said Irwin, as a closer look reveals more complicated feelings among voters.

Voters in the election overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, which captured over 65% of the vote, despite opposition by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders. The measure imposes stricter penalties for some drug and theft crimes.

“It’s impossible to disconnect what happened in the Hochman and Price races from Proposition 36 passing by such a big margin in the state,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor at the University of California Berkeley.

A poll by Berkeley IGS researchers a month before the election showed that many voters who favored the measure also supported expanding rehabilitation and treatment for first-time offenders to improve the criminal justice system.

Hochman understands that nuance in public feelings and believes he can do “real and effective criminal justice reform while prioritizing public safety,” he told CNN.

To do this, Hochman says his administration will mark a return to reviewing each case individually, “looking at the individual defendant and the defendant’s background, the crime committed, and the impact on the victim, to determine who the true threats are to our public safety.”

Hochman further notes that accountability can mean something other than incarceration. First-time non-violent offenders still owe a debt to society, he says, but it can be satisfied outside of prison with community service, restitution or participation in diversion programs.

Hochman backed by major police unions

One of Hochman’s endorsers is Michael Cao, who wears a dual hat as the mayor of Arcadia city and president of the Los Angeles division of the League of California Cities, which represents dozens of cities in the county.

Cao says Gascón’s reluctance to prosecute low-level offenses trickled down into the streets as residents and small businesses repeatedly told him they felt unsafe in their local community. The concern is that it fostered an environment where perpetrators who don’t fear consequences become more brazen, Cao said, and law enforcement officers feel their hands are tied.

“Our local residents, our small businesses, were really, really in a tough situation,” Cao said, adding Hochman was appealing because of his pragmatism and commitment to continue criminal justice reform efforts.

Hochman was swept into office with endorsements from major law enforcement agencies and unions in Los Angeles County, including the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers’ Association, according to his website.

Irwin and other criminal justice reform advocates are concerned Hochman’s overwhelming support from law enforcement unions will pose a potential conflict of interest in holding them accountable.

Hochman strongly refutes that perception, asserting the people who contend he is inherently compromised “don’t know me at all.”

“I will not tolerate a law enforcement officer who crosses the law, and I will go after them with the force of the office,” Hochman said. “But I do believe that the overwhelming numbers of law enforcement officers are doing a dangerous and difficult job very well every day, and those officers will get my full partnership.”

Along with robust police accountability, Hochman says during his first year in office he intends to bolster the work of the county’s Conviction Integrity Unity, one of more than a hundred such units around the country that re-evaluate cases and investigate claims of innocence.

For Hochman, success in the first year must include increased levels of confidence that criminals are being held accountable in every community.

One high-profile case returned to the national spotlight just two weeks before the election, when Gascón announced he would ask a judge to consider resentencing Erik and Lyle Menendez, the two brothers who shot and killed their parents in 1989.

Gascón filed a motion recommending a judge resentence the siblings following a review that came after defense attorneys said in 2023 they had new evidence pointing to abuse by their father.

But the brothers’ fate is now uncertain, as Hochman has promised to personally review the case from top to bottom – by revisiting thousands of pages of confidential prison files, transcripts from trial, and interviewing prosecutors, defense attorneys and family members.

“Whatever decision I end up taking is one I need to be able to defend in court,” said Hochman.

A reaction to a heightened sense of public disorder

The high-profile losses of the two reform prosecutors on the West Coast represent a setback for advocates of criminal justice reform, but it doesn’t mean California is a bellwether for the nation, according to Schickler.

Residents in California tend to be more prone to voting in reaction to the unique challenges in the state – ongoing crises of addiction, mental health and homelessness in nearly every community – that lead to a heightened sense of public disorder, according to Schickler and Irwin of Smart Justice California.

While Hochman did embrace reform efforts in his campaign such as an alternative response to prosecuting low level crimes, Irwin points to his record of traditional prosecution work as a defense attorney and his “aggressively” tough-on-crime platform as a state attorney general candidate.

Irwin says one area of concern is whether Hochman will decide to “criminalize homelessness” in the county in the wake of Gov. Newsom’s controversial recent executive order directing state officials to clear encampments.

Hochman says it’s not his job as district attorney to solve the homelessness crisis, instead pointing to the success of the state’s Homeless Outreach & Mobile Engagement (HOME) program as a model for partnering law enforcement with social services to help unhoused people rather than lock them up.

He advocates treating the homeless “compassionately,” however making clear that he will enforce the laws.

“You can deal with homeless encampments in a way that actually helps the homeless people themselves, but then clears the areas for the public so that the public can enjoy public spaces,” Hochman said.

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