Employing work-study students from New College of California School of Law, Mike represented prisoners with their civil legal issues or in any other matter where they did not have an attorney assigned. He also began his work with the Sheriff’s Department by drafting rules and regulations on inmate treatment.

In 1979 Mike ran for Sheriff in a field of 7 candidates and won. It was a wild week. He turned 32 on Monday, got elected on Tuesday and married on Friday. Mike and his spouse, Beverly, have lived in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood for most of the time since his first election. they have two daughters, one attending Yale University and the other attending Mission High School.

As Sheriff, it has been Mike’s goal to bring compassion and social service to the administration of justice. This has applied to both the jail operations portion of the job as well as to the civil judgment enforcement side. For example, soon after becoming Sheriff, Mike established an Eviction Assistance Program to help tenants make the transition when facing eviction. Services provided by the program may take the form of referrals to low cost housing, interpretation services, mental health assistance, emergency housing or other problems that a tenant may face.

The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department runs one of the twenty five largest county jail systems in America – with over 45,000 bookings a year and a daily jail population of around two thousand prisoners. As Sheriff, Mike frequently reminds the public and policy makers that almost all of the prisoners eventually get out of jail and come back into the City’s neighborhoods, so any form of education or treatment that can be provided is better for both the individual and the community.

Over the years that Mike has been Sheriff, he have developed a range of programs that currently serve a very high percentage of the incarcerated population:

• A women’s therapeutic community drug treatment program, called SISTERS (Sisters in Sober Treatment, Empowerment & Recovery).
  
  
• A men’s therapeutic community drug treatment program called Roads to Recovery.
  
  
• An anti-violence counseling program called Resolve to Stop the Violence Program (RSVP). This program received the prestigious Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
  
  
• The nation’s first charter high school created for an incarcerated population, The Five Keys Charter High School. The school gets its name from the five life areas that every person being released from jail must successfully address in order to avoid coming back to jail: Education, employment, recovery, family and community.
  
  
• The No Violence Alliance (NoVA), a community based counseling and case management program for violent offenders who have completed their sentences.
  
  
• Prisoner Legal Assistance, a program Mike started over 30 years ago is now in the Sheriff’s Department budget and employs two full time attorneys and continues to use law students from several local law schools.
  
  
• The Earth Stewards, a job training program, in conjunction with the City’s Public Utilities Commission, for inner city youth using landscaping and gardening as a path to employment. www.gardenproject.org

Another major goal of Mike’s has been to diversity the deputized staff of the Department through community-based recruitment. Currently, the deputized staff is 80% women and minorities, including gay and lesbian officers. No other major law enforcement agency in the country can match this level of diversity in uniform staff.