The Office That Decides Everything: Five District Attorneys Who Proved Prosecutors Can Shrink the System

For most of American history, district attorney races went unopposed, unwatched, and unremarked. That era is over. A decade of organizing has transformed prosecutors' offices from an afterthought of reform politics into its central battleground — and a handful of elected DAs have shown, with data rather than rhetoric, that the person who controls the charging decision controls the size of the jail.

Here are five whose records offer both proof and a playbook.

1. Kim Foxx — Cook County, Illinois

When Kim Foxx won office in Chicago in 2016, she inherited an office whose felony review process sent thousands of low-level cases into the state's prison system each year. Her administration expanded felony review units, formalized a presumption of diversion for first-time nonviolent offenses, and stopped prosecuting retail thefts under a certain dollar threshold as felonies. Cook County's jail population, once among the largest in the country, fell to levels unseen since the early 1980s. Foxx's experience also illustrates the resistance reform prosecutors face: she weathered impeachment attempts from police unions and conservative legislators, a reminder that the office is a political position whether reformers like it or not.

2. George Gascón — Los Angeles County, California

Gascón's 2020 victory in the nation's largest local prosecutor's office was a stress test for the reform movement. His sweeping policy directives — ending cash bail requests for most misdemeanors, barring sentencing enhancements, prioritizing resentencing for people serving extreme terms — triggered a recall campaign and sustained litigation from his own line prosecutors. The lesson is double-edged: policy memos can shift tens of thousands of cases, but implementation requires management reform inside an office culture built for conviction. Gascón survived the recall; the infrastructure he built is still being tested.

3. Satana Deberry — Durham County, North Carolina

Deberry's Durham model demonstrates what happens when data and community trust are treated as goals in themselves. Her office publishes its charging and sentencing data openly, partners with the county's public defender on early diversion, and treats prosecutors' discretionary power as something to be audited rather than guarded. Durham's jail population declined steadily during her tenure, and the office's transparency has become a national reference point. For organizers, Deberry's election — a Black woman, a former legal aid lawyer, backed by a multiracial coalition — shows what a contested primary with genuine community investment can accomplish in a mid-sized jurisdiction.

4. Rachel Rollins — Suffolk County, Massachusetts

Rollins arrived in Boston in 2019 with a now-famous list: fifteen low-level offenses her office would presumptively decline to prosecute, including shoplifting, drug possession, and disorderly conduct. Critics predicted chaos. Independent research found the opposite — prosecutions fell, and so did the number of people rearrested for those offenses. Her tenure proved that declination itself, used deliberately, is a reform tool. It also proved that a DA can move policy faster than any legislature, since charging decisions require no one's permission.

5. José Garza — Travis County, Texas

In Austin, Garza won in 2020 on a platform of prosecuting police violence and ending the prosecution of marijuana possession. His office has secured indictments in officer-involved deaths that previous administrations declined to pursue, and it has invested in a convener role for diversion programs serving people with mental illness — a population that fills jails in every Texas county. Garza's record shows that reform prosecution is not merely about shrinking the system but about redirecting its power toward accountability.

What Activists Should Take From Them

Across these five offices, the practical lessons converge.

First, primaries matter more than general elections. In most DA jurisdictions, the Democratic primary is the real contest; organizing there, with local endorsements and small-dollar coalitions, yields disproportionate returns.

Second, demand policy commitments in writing before Election Day. The candidates who govern well are the ones who campaigned on specific, auditable directives — not vague promises of fairness.

Third, build accountability infrastructure for the day after victory. Recall campaigns, hostile state legislatures, and internal resistance are predictable. Coalitions that survive the transition — with data analysts, formerly incarcerated organizers, and victim advocates at the table — are the ones that keep reform prosecutors honest and protect them when the backlash arrives.

Fourth, think beyond the big cities. Durham and Travis County show that mid-sized jurisdictions can innovate faster than national ones, and their successes travel.

The prosecutor's office has been called the most powerful position in the American justice system, and for once the cliché is accurate. Five offices have demonstrated that the machinery of mass incarceration is not self-operating. Someone pulls the levers. The question for the movement is who holds the handle — and who is watching.