A lot of half-educated people on here have a tendency to read a headline that says(e.g.) “we can’t directly empirically prove that Boudin’s policies caused an increase in crime” and to draw totally unjustified conclusions from it like “prosecution never has any effect on crime.”

What’s true is that we can’t prove, empirically, what the effect is of a more vs a less progressive prosecutor. We don’t have enough data at this time.

That DOES NOT mean that prosecution has no effect on crime rates. It means that we have to make a judgment call about what we think the effect is likely to be, even though we can’t know for a scientific certainty. This is an extremely common situation—many things in the social sciences aren’t super simple black and white issues like “building housing reduces the cost of housing” where you can just point to a study that cleanly answers the question.

One of the most replicated and well-established findings in the field of criminology is that effective felony police work decreases the incidence of violent crime. It’s also extremely well-established that incapacitation (having the people who do violent crimes in prison, where they can’t do violent crimes) is a big part of that effect. I can provide sources for either of these claims if you’d like; my understanding is that they’re not controversial at all.

Given that, why on earth would it not be the case that basically refusing to prosecute crimes pushes crime rates upwards? It seems obvious that it would. If you “can’t imagine” why that would be the case, the burden of proof is on you to find strong evidence for your theory.

And no, “I looked at the year before boudin was elected and the year after and compared the rates of reported crimes” is not strong evidence of anything.