LOS ANGELES Los Angeles County is currently responsible for almost one-third of Californias incarcerated population . Black residents in the county are incarcerated at 13 times the rate of white residents, and LA County jails house more inmates than any other jail system in the country. More than 5,000 of those inmates are struggling with mental illness, making Los Angeles jail system the largest in-patient mental health center in the nation.

California has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform , slowly undoing policies that contribute to mass incarceration and disproportionately punish the poor and people of color. But in LA County, home to more than 10 million people, District Attorney Jackie Lacey has resisted change, opposing almost every reform measure thats come up during her eight years in office.

When she was elected in 2012, Lacey became the first woman and the first Black person to serve as district attorney in Los Angeles. Criminal justice reform advocates were cautiously optimistic that Lacey would be open to some change. She grew up in the then-mostly Black neighborhood of Crenshaw, near gang violence and drug dealing. She remembers watching the 1965 Watts riots on television and hearing complaints about racist cops brutalizing members of the community. But when she talks about how her background has influenced her, she emphasizes the victims of criminals not the victims of unaccountable law enforcement officials.

When Lacey was in her late 20s, her father was shot in the leg while mowing the front lawn. Lacey watched him change from a very strong, Southern macho guy to a man who lived in fear that someone would come back to get him. I see how crime affects communities of color, she told HuffPost in an interview last month.

Now, criminal justice activists want Lacey gone. On Wednesday afternoons, members of Black Lives Matter LA gather outside Laceys downtown office to protest her failure to prosecute police officers who have killed members of the community. More than 500 people have died at the hands of law enforcement since Lacey took office, but her office has prosecuted only one case . Last year, Lacey declined to prosecute a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who killed an unarmed Black man even after the police chief called on her office to file charges .

The ground-level agitation against Lacey, combined with a nationwide push to elect progressive prosecutors, has brought out two serious challengers in the March 3 primary race for district attorney. Former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascn announced his run in October and has secured the LA County Democrats endorsement . As one of the leading progressive prosecutors in the country, Gascn oversaw major reforms during his eight-year tenure in San Francisco before moving home to LA. Earlier in his career, he was a high-ranking officer in the LAPD.

Former public defender Rachel Rossi who has seen firsthand the harm prosecutors can cause when they imprison people who do not pose a public safety threat is also running for Laceys seat. Although she has less name recognition than her opponents, Rossis experience as a public defender has earned her support from voters who are typically skeptical of prosecutors.

The district attorney race might be the most important item before voters in 2020 , the Los Angeles Times editorial board argued in October. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider that this DAs office is the largest local prosecutorial agency in the country. Like most district attorneys, the top LA prosecutor has vast discretion about how aggressively to pursue certain crimes. With the countrys second-largest city as a proving ground, the next DA might be able to demonstrate that a meaningful decrease in incarceration doesnt inevitably lead to an explosion in crime and that police can be held accountable for harming civilians without a breakdown in civil order.