Facing an unprecedented county deficit, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen issued a stark warning about proposed budget cuts to his office. He said:
“Public safety costs money. Justice is expensive. Money is finite. There is less money. And so, there will be less justice. Please listen carefully: there will be less safety.”
For prosecutors, this must have sounded like a bar.
He followed the axiom with rhetorical questions about what would happen if the District Attorney’s Office had to absorb cuts. “Will people get hurt? Will they be killed? … I don’t know,” he said.
But how exactly does that work? How do budget cuts—cuts that are being carried by every agency in the county—suddenly translate into danger, even death, if they touch the DA’s office?
The warnings Rosen is issuing refer to a possible $19 million reduction in the coming year. For context, the county already agreed to a $185 million net appropriation for the office this year, up from $177 million the previous year, according to the San Jose Spotlight. That budget is more than double the size of its institutional counterweight, the Public Defender’s Office.
While the DA’s office received a larger budget this year, the Public Defender’s Office had to cut 10 positions.
Rosen’s tactic of moralizing an annual budget debate might have been more on point if used by the public defender with just a few words changed. It could have sounded like this:
“Freedom is expensive. Money is finite. There is less money. And so, there will be less freedom. Please listen carefully: there will be less freedom.”
The reality is that, stripped of the hyperbolic fear-mongering, it is the District Attorney’s Office that is expensive. And less money flowing to that office does not necessarily mean less safety. It could mean more resources available for county obligations that directly address the underlying conditions and drivers of crime.
Funding mental health services keeps the public safe. Housing keeps the public safe. Investments in community health and youth development keep the public safe. Funding these services is an investment in solutions that prevent crime before it occurs.
By contrast, the function of a district attorney’s office is largely reactive. It responds to crime after it has already occurred. There is nothing inherently preventative about prosecuting an alleged offense after the harm has been done.
Moreover, prosecution generates costs far beyond the DA’s own budget. It acts as a cost multiplier within the county system.
A criminal prosecution requires the involvement of many other actors: court staff, probation departments, defense attorneys, and other law enforcement agencies. Each of these components carries its own costs. Housing someone in the county jail costs money. The destabilizing effects of incarceration—often requiring social services, hospital care, or emergency housing—also generate significant public expense.
An investment in the District Attorney’s Office therefore commits the county to a cascade of additional costs that can quickly become exponential.
Yet Rosen doubled down on his warning about what budget cuts might mean for the community. Programs within his office such as drug and mental health diversion, he said, “will be gone. No more.”
But diversion programs are, by definition, off-ramps from prosecution. They are pathways away from the criminal legal system and incarceration. Their underlying premise is that issues such as mental health challenges or substance use disorders should be addressed through treatment and public health responses—not through criminal charges and jail cells.
If the district attorney’s office can no longer serve as a conduit to non-carceral programming, that is not necessarily a threat. It is, rather, an admission that scarce public resources might be better spent funding those programs directly.
After all, why fund a prosecutor’s office merely to step aside?
Rosen’s attempt to frighten the county into preserving his office’s large budget comes at a moment when communities are grappling with layoffs, houselessness, strained health care systems, and unmet social service needs. Against that backdrop, the rhetoric can come across as deeply self-absorbed.
And so the opposite conclusion may be worth considering: directing less of the county’s finite money toward prosecution might actually produce more justice for a community in struggle.
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Categories: Breaking News Everyday Injustice Opinion Tags: Criminal Justice Reform district attorney budgets Diversion Programs prosecution costs public defender funding Santa Clara County