Chesa

Boudin

Chesa Boudin is the founding executive director of Berkeley's Criminal Law & Justice Center, a policy and advocacy hub. His scholarship and writing has appeared in publications including the Yale Law Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New York Times, the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, the Yale Law & Policy Review, as well as multiple books.  

Boudin served as San Francisco’s elected district attorney from 2020 until 2022. During that time, Boudin implemented bold reforms to ensure that the criminal legal system delivered safety and justice for all San Franciscans. His achievements include a significant expansion of the office’s victim services’ division; eliminating prosecutors’ use of money bail; prosecuting police for excessive force; suing the manufacturers of ghost guns; expanding diversion to address root causes of crime, and an historic reduction in incarceration. During his time in office both violent and non-violent crime fell by double digits. Prior to his election Boudin clerked for two federal judges and worked for years as a deputy public defender where he tried two dozen cases to jury verdict as lead counsel. He is a graduate of Yale college and Yale law school and attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.
His biological parents spent a combined 62 years in prison starting when he was a baby.