Chesa Boudin

Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton is among a small group of district attorneys working to dial back decades of tough-on-crime approaches and as she does so, faces challenges.

In a sign of the nation’s rapid rethinking of the justice system prompted by protests against racism and police brutality, dozens of elected prosecutors, corrections officials and probation chiefs have called for all youth prisons to be shut down.

With most free residents across the United States keeping at least six feet apart, feverishly washing their hands and avoiding any social groups, 43,000 young people in juvenile lockups and prisons are living in coronavirus petri dishes that have become “brewing reservoirs” of infection, according to inmates and juvenile justice experts.