The MacArthur Foundation, a liberal organization that heavily funds criminal justice reform efforts across the country, is withholding $625,000 from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office until the office shows it is “fully committed to the goals and strategies” of reform, according to a letter sent to the district attorney on Aug. 5.
In a blistering Aug. 21 response, obtained by Mission Local alongside the original letter, the DA’s office said it would no longer work with the MacArthur Foundation.
“Due to this fundamental difference in criminal justice reform approach, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office hereby relinquishes our role as Grant administrator on the Safety Justice Challenge grant,” wrote Monifa Willis, the DA’s office chief of staff. “Based on your letter and actions, I don’t believe SFDA is being presented with a genuine, collaborative partnership.”
“Our office will not be used as sharecroppers to a Foundation’s vision of criminal justice reform. Nor will we sit silently and allow structural racism to play out through a grant process.”
Monifa Willis, DA’s chief of staff
The response leaned heavily on the racial identities of Willis and DA Brooke Jenkins, both of whom are Black. Willis accused the MacArthur Foundation of racism for its tone and process in dealing with the DA’s office.
“On multiple occasions you have sat in meetings with two Black women, lecturing to us about your concern for jail population increases, the injustices of the criminal justice system and populations that need serving,” Willis wrote. “District Attorney Jenkins and I have full passion and stake in improving racial and ethnic disparities in the jail population. This is not a social experiment to us … it’s our real lives.
“Our office will not be used as sharecroppers to a Foundation’s vision of criminal justice reform. Nor will we sit silently and allow structural racism to play out through a grant process,” the letter concluded. “That is our commitment to true criminal justice reform.”
The MacArthur Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Grants from the MacArthur Foundation started under then-District Attorney George Gascón in 2018 specifically to reduce jail populations.
A post-pandemic decline in jail numbers has reversed under Jenkins. The foundation’s letter cited the rising jail population, which has ballooned to an 180-day average of 1,151, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Between 2020 and 2022, the daily jail population averaged between 850 and 931.
Jail inmates have described a chaotic situation cohabiting with more mentally ill and drug addicted residents than before, the result of crackdowns announced by Mayor London Breed targeting both drug dealers and users alike. Overcrowded conditions and assaults on sheriff’s deputies have led to several lockdowns in recent months.
Deputies have long complained about inadequate staffing, and the Board of Supervisors held a hearing on the matter in May.
As of Friday, there were 1,213 people incarcerated in San Francisco jails, a number that more closely matches pre-pandemic jail populations.
The MacArthur Foundation, which has spent more than $380 million nationally on criminal justice reform in just the last 10 years, had previously awarded three grants to San Francisco totaling $5.2 million, according to the foundation.
In its Aug. 5 letter to the DA’s office, the foundation’s director of criminal justice, Laurie Garduque, wrote that she was withholding a final payment of $625,000 “until measurable progress is made on the benchmarks listed” in the letter.
Those benchmarks were “addressing the increased jail population,” implementing a pre-arraignment program aimed at decreasing jail stays for those with “behavioral health and other complex needs,” and launching the latest cohort of a fellowship program that brings people with experiences in the criminal justice system into weekly meetings with DA staff.
The DA’s office would have to make improvements in all three before any funds were disbursed, the letter said, or another agency should take the lead on the foundation’s criminal justice reform programs in the city.
On Friday, the DA’s office said implementation of the pre-arraignment program was in the hands of the Department of Public Health and the Public Defender’s Office, and that it currently has other partnerships with those who have been previously or currently incarcerated.
In the foundation’s letter, Garduque expressed hope that San Francisco would “recommit to the goals” of the Safety and Justice Challenge grant and “make measurable progress on your proposed strategies. In the absence of progress, the Foundation suggests that [San Francisco] consider shifting the lead role from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to another agency that is better positioned to make progress.”
In the response to the foundation, the district attorney’s office lambasted the “letter’s hostile tone” and accused the MacArthur Foundation of single-mindedly focusing on jail numbers as a proxy for criminal justice reform.
“It has continued to feel as though the ideological goal of reducing the jail population at all costs has conflicted with our emphasis on doing so responsibly and safely, which I am sure is a new boundary in a post-Chesa Boudin era,” Willis wrote, referencing the previous DA who was recalled in a campaign in which Jenkins participated.
Since the turnover in administration, scores of staffers have left Jenkins’ office, saying Boudin’s focus on criminal justice reform has vanished.
Boudin’s administration was a throughline in Willis’ response. Since Jenkins supplanted her former boss in July 2022, Willis said the foundation’s approach to their office has been adversarial and biased, filled with “constant reference to the previous administration’s irresponsible approach.”
The DA’s new management, Willis said, was still committed to criminal justice reform — but with caveats.
“Our office has a mission to protect the safety of all those who live, work and visit San Francisco, and while we believe in the mission of identifying alternatives to incarceration, we must achieve it in a manner that does not come at the expense of the safety of our city.”
Additional reporting by Joe Eskenazi.
MacArthur: We’re not giving free money because you have a massive jail overpopulation issue, horrendous prisoner and guard environment, and putting people with serious issues not in the correct environment.
DA’s Office with brain: We appreciated your comments, but we’d like to discontinue our partnership due to differences in approach.
Real DA’s Office: THAT’S RACIST AGAINST BLACK PEOPLE FOR POINTING OUT PROBLEMS.
SF DA’s Office everyone.
MacArthur Foundation should fund the construction of a new jail. We can put their name on it.
A prosecutor’s office with a $93m budget and the discretion to cage individuals, where they can be made to work for no pay as slaves were, or bankrupt them for criminal defense, a slight bit more power than 40 acres and a mule, is the poor tenant farmer sharecropper in this picture because…racism.
MacArthur is as mainstream as it gets. Jenkins is the reactionary extremist in service of white supremacy in this picture.
Wasn’t the response written by her friend who was hired with no experience?
The DA whose career is based on mass incarcerating Black and brown people is calling her critics “racist”?
Another day, another new low for Brooke Jenkins’ and her office.
Need a new DA.
“Jail inmates have described a chaotic situation cohabiting with more mentally ill and drug addicted residents than before, the result of crackdowns announced by Mayor London Breed targeting both drug dealers and users alike.”
Is the idea to move the population from the streets in the TL to the jail where it’s harder to see the failure to provide helpful assistance?
I just went to the org’s web pages. They are hardly all white for atarters
It appears that prisons are supposed to be within thriving and growing societies. The art of money has and will continue to put the concept of Reentry reform on ice. It is clear that prisons are more valuable than the people that it serves.
Waste of money, probably counterproductive actually. Criminal justice reform is a legislative concern first and foremost and it’s a..backwards to try influence DAs/GAs who are bound to follow the law of the land.
MacArthur foundation would prefer that we keep all these criminals on the street & let them continue to wreak havoc in San Francisco as they have for the past however many years. To be clear, folks who are stealing, selling drugs, etc. are in fact wreaking havoc – non-violent crime erodes society too. The administration is finally making progress to clean up the streets – both with homeless camps and crime – but MacArthur foundation would prefer those criminal elements stay on the street and destroy our community. The prison reform camp has yet to produce a solid road map of what to do with folks committing crime in our community. Just don’t put them in jail or prison or give them any negative repercussions that could impede them in any way. We’ve been doing that for some time in SF & many other progressive urban cities, while its residents suffer the consequences. My guess is MacArthur foundation folks live in the suburbs & don’t have to live with the consequences of their policies. San Francisco needs to build more jails if criminals are going to flood our city.
Maybe you should Google the Foundation before posting?
It’s insulting for a bunch of white saviors, who have the time to volunteer for things like the MacArthur Foundation because they inherited wealth, to come in here and tell our black female DA that she doesn’t know how to do her job.
It’s racist to withhold funds for filling jails beyond capacity with Black people? Woo, boy!
So don’t take their money and a look at their website will put the White Savior trope to rest. https://www.macfound.org/
Employees of the foundation aren’t volunteers. They’re well paid know-nothings. The foundation has to spend money on salaries to keep its tax advantaged status. Literally this is what billionaire influence in local policy looks like.
“White saviors” is an offensive racist trope. Funny how it’s imperative for Blacks to create generational wealth, but white people who really know how to create generational wealth, don’t deserve it. Must be some hare brained woke math…