Well, I think your position is probably one of ignorance. Plenty of people I talk to are for tough prosecution on things like violent crime and against tough prosecution for simple drug possession.
> Only a small subset of prosecutors elected in the most liberal districts are rewarded by their constituencies for exercising prosecutorial discretion. I say that without making any judgment as to whether they're using that discretion well — I'm just observing that very few prosecutors work that way.
Yes, that does seem to be a trend. Prosecutorial discretion is actually important, but it doesn't mean you let crime run rampant, either.
I don't live in a jurisdiction that elect prosecutors, but is this actually a thing? Do candidates/incumbents run campaign ads on their conviction rate? Are voters researching/talking about the conviction rate of the candidates like it's a pissing contest?
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/07/kamala-harris-san-franci...
> If the conviction rate had been measured by actual cases pursued, rather than all cases referred by police, Hallinan said, his office would have had a conviction rate that was relatively similar to Los Angeles and other major cities.
> And Hallinan was getting results. Overall, crime rates were plummeting. Violent crime had gone down close to 60 percent in San Francisco since Hallinan took office.
> Still, the low conviction rate resulted in headline after headline about San Francisco’s permissive attitude toward crime, a media environment harnessed by the Harris campaign.
Only a small subset of prosecutors elected in the most liberal districts are rewarded by their constituencies for exercising prosecutorial discretion. I say that without making any judgment as to whether they're using that discretion well — I'm just observing that very few prosecutors work that way.