Not Sure How They Deal With Criminals In Your Town, But ’Round Here We Use A Restorative Justice Process

"District attorneys hold immense authority in people’s lives and in a community. When that authority is exercised by someone who publicly expresses racial, religious, or gender-based bias, it endangers both individual rights and the integrity of the justice system itself.” @katechatfield.bsky.social

Latest statement from CPDA: One Year After Prop. 36 Passes, Incarceration is Increasing, Treatment is Not.

CPDA is collecting information about arrests in and around state courts by immigration agents. If you have witnessed any action by federal agents in and around state courthouses, please fill out this form. Form link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Great read.

This was fantastic but I’m not wholly disinterested. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

So this is not just any small county elected official engaging in good old gutter racism. This is an official who wields enormous power over people’s lives and a community. Who gets charged, who gets held in a cage, how many years should be taken from a life… www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/a...

I am begging people to understand the different powers that a mayor holds and that a prosecutor holds. Begging. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

This is so true. They are going to follow the 2020 SF playbook & create hysteria. And everyone is going to fall for it hook, line, and sinker. First and most vociferous perpetrator of this nonsense will be the NYTimes.

The U.S. and the Philippines are the only two countries with a for-profit bail industry, says civil rights lawyer @equalityalec.bsky.social. The insistence that people in pre-trial detention pay to get out of jail leads to "millions of coerced guilty pleas" by poor people each year, he says.

Welcome to the next installment of our CPDA series “What is a public defender?” This week’s question we are answering is “What would a world without public defenders look like?” Submit your questions to [email protected], and we’ll return soon with a new question!

CPDA and its members across California stand united with immigrant communities, labor partners, and local leaders demanding the immediate withdrawal of CBP agents from the Bay Area. California’s commitment to justice and sanctuary cannot coexist with the federal militarization of our streets.

I’ve been saying this for decades now…

Remember Prop 36? Which promised to "help everyone come indoors" through longer prison sentences and drug treatments? Guess how many people completed the drug treatment in the first 6 months! Did you guess... 25? calmatters.org/justice/2025...

I saw myself as maybe all in for J.B. Pritzker But I am losing faith, rapidly. Police state fascism in America is bigger than Trump. It's backed by Democrats just like Republicans. And it's not going anywhere

I get it, ICE is doing insane things. Some pretend that state & local police haven’t subjected brown & black folk to same pain for time immemorial. BUT: Furtive glances and/or particula skin or bumper stickers or cultural affiliation have been enough to nullify the 4th amendment for a long time.

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

Local cops are not on the side of Democratic politicians or under their actual control. People refuse to understand this too even though we've been making this point for decades.

An “immigration judge” is not an actual judge in the judicial branch. They are a DOJ employee. As Judge Young, an actual judge, made clear in one of the truly essential parts of his Tuesday ruling. www.lawdork.com/p/judge-will...

CPDA Executive Director Kate Chatfield spoke to @calmatters.org re: how resentencing is working for the formerly incarcerated: “If you are looking at public safety, there is no reason to hold people in prison after they age out. That is what this data shows.” Read: calmatters.org/justice/2025...

“Well, the next time someone brings up a terrible anecdote about Cambodia or Vietnam, I will definitely drop the Star Wars story to show that people have two sides.” Chotiner is comedy gold. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Tens of thousands of protestors marched in dozens of Italian cities today while strikes brought trains and highway transport to a halt after unions called a nationwide walkout in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

Public defenders have warned for decades: Police cannot be trusted to protect anything but capital. The police state is bad. The surveillance state is bad. Courts won't save us. Our laws are enforced selectively and oppressively. Due process is flexible at best. Wish we were correct less often.

Damn, he's good, and right.

“California’s largest immigration detention center has already filled up with 500 [people] since it quietly opened 2 weeks ago…advocates and lawyers say..private prison operator CoreCivic flouted state laws and the municipal code in its rapid pursuit to open…” www.fresnobee.com/news/local/a...

if you say "chesa boudin" 3 times in the mirror you will see a preview of what the next several years in NYC will look like

The fastest-growing homeless population in America? School-age children. Last year, student homelessness in California—where rents continue to soar past wages—rose by 20,000, reaching its highest level in a decade. But sure, keep insisting homelessness is all about mental illness and addiction.

A big hurdle is going to be the fact that a lot of people were just calling for what Trump’s doing as recently as a year or so ago in the name of fighting homelessness and shoplifting. So acknowledging the racism and violence he intends now puts that recent advocacy in quite a poor light.

New today - @calpublicdefenders.bsky.social and @katechatfield.bsky.social in @kqednews.kqed.org on a CPDA-sponsored bill to require police to disclose AI use in reports: www.kqed.org/news/1205077...

CPDA Executive Director @katechatfield.bsky.social was quoted in a story from the @sfchronicle.com about the passing of AB 379, which increases penalties for commercial sex, including making loitering in public a misdemeanor. Full story: www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

Welcome to our Member Spotlight, where CPDA shares more about its amazing members. This week we’re spotlighting Cecilia Fierro, Deputy Public Defender for Contra Costa County. Learn more about the work we do at www.cpda.org!

Compared to the general population, unhoused people are held in jail for 3.5x as long, despite typically being charged with the lowest level crimes It’s safe to assume that unaffordable cash bail is to blame. No one should have to stay behind bars because they can't afford bail

if you're struggling to wrap your head around how ice can be like it is, i beg of you to reckon with how american kids are treated by the ordinary local police, judges, prosecutors & talked about in the newspaper every day in pretty much every county all across this country

No words.

“we have to stop them from treating immigrants like criminals”… is not a political fight you can win, which is the whole point—to enlist you in affirming there is a group of people called “criminals” deserving of violence in the name of public order and protecting you

I talked to KCRW about how, since the 1980s, political leaders have framed homelessness as a problem of individual pathology—a tactic to conceal its economic roots, justify removing unhoused people from public space, and divert scrutiny from a system that both creates and profits off this precarity.

I am BEGGING ppl to stop repeating the fascists’ framing (ie nickname) of the MAGA Murder Bill. I was talking to a PD this morning & we were ripping our hair out remembering the first lesson of litigation - never repeat the other side’s story or argument. Call it what your article shows it to be.

I've never been more pro-grift and pro-contractor-overcharge in my life than I am right now.

Nestled up against the steps of City Hall in LA is a large placard with missing posters for the recently disappeared in the city.

Thinking of mass expansion of ICE in light of mass incarceration, started 50 yrs. ago & with us still. $ for ICE not only funds a dept., it funds a political force. Funding cops funds cops' unions; funding prisons funds prison guard unions. They then go on to capture govt. and local/state economies

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy. I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

Thinking of mass expansion of ICE in light of mass incarceration, started 50 yrs. ago & with us still. $ for ICE not only funds a dept., it funds a political force. Funding cops funds cops' unions; funding prisons funds prison guard unions. They then go on to capture govt. and local/state economies

this is the level of funding where all the possibilities for American politics that have been described as hyperbolic over the past decades - the comparisons to Nazi Germany and other nightmares of the 20th century - become logistically possible and politically likely

With this budget, ICE alone would have nearly as large a detention operation as all 50 states' prison systems combined. Bigger budget than the Marine Corps. Police-state levels of spending

Your unfortunate reminder that there is another human rights crisis occurring in California right now. davisvanguard.org/2025/06/cali...

As goes California, so goes the nation.

@acekatana.bsky.social from @groundgamela.bsky.social, an LA County Public Defender, speaking on what’s happening in LA, how you can get to work in your own community, and how you can support your community no matter your bandwidth

"This moment demands moral clarity. We will not stand by while ICE terrorizes our communities, or while law enforcement attacks the people... CPDA is proud to defend those who defend others — in the streets, in the courts, and in the halls of power.” Read our full statement at www.cpda.org