Posted on 08/16/2015 4:51:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
"The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" isn't living up to its promise. Also known as Proposition 47, the California ballot initiative, which was approved in November 2014 with 60 percent of the vote, downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon was the rare prosecutor who pushed for its approval. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, "What we have been doing hasn't worked, frankly."
Gascon spokesman Alex Bastian told me, "The voters indicated that possessing small amounts of narcotics" should not constitute a felony. Californians don't want three-year sentences for drug possession. I don't, either, but on the ground, the legal fix is not living up to its hype. Prop 47 has made it easier for drug offenders to avoid mandated treatment programs. The measure reduced penalties for the theft of goods worth less than $950. Habitual offenders know that, critics say, and they've changed their habits to avoid hard time. The measure's approval also prompted the state to free some 3,700 inmates.
In San Francisco, theft from cars is up 47 percent this year over the same period in 2014. Auto theft is up by 17 percent. Robberies are up 23 percent. And aggravated assaults are up 2 percent, according to San Francisco police spokesman Carlos Manfredi. Burglaries are down 5 percent.
The City of Angels saw a 12.7 percent increase in overall crime this year, according to the Los Angeles Times; violent offenses rose 20.6 percent, while property crime rose by 11 percent. Mayor Eric Garcetti says Prop 47 may explain Los Angeles' change in course from crime reduction to crime increases.
"It used to be that if you were caught in the possession of methamphetamine, you would be arrested; you'd end up in drug court or in some other program, probably in custody receiving some type of treatment," Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig told the Daily Democrat. "Well, now the officers on the street just give them a ticket. So they have been arrested for a crime. The case actually gets forwarded to my office. We charge them with a crime, but they never show up to court. They get arrested again and are given another ticket for methamphetamine. And so we've seen that."
Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell says LA substance abuse treatment rolls are down 60 percent. Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean told the Ventura County Reporter that Prop 47 got drug offenders out of jail "but it also got them out of treatment." He also believes the measure will increase violent crime, as substance abusers commit more robberies and assaults.
Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation sees Prop 47 as a toxic extension of Gov. Jerry Brown's 2011 "realignment" policy. Realignment switched the responsibility of incarcerating nonserious, nonviolent, non-sex-offender felons from state prisons to local jails. Then Prop 47 whittled away at the definition of what constitutes a felony. "The most commonly committed felonies no longer carry a prison sentence," Rushford told me. If the police catch someone, they know "they're just going to cite him and let him out again." If a crime isn't serious enough to rate a felony, "how much money are you going to spend on it?"
When I went out on patrol of homeless encampments with San Francisco police officers earlier this month, more than one officer suggested voters repeal Prop 47 if they want fewer squatters in the city.
Bastian took issue with the suggestion that Prop 47 essentially decriminalizes petty crimes. The ballot measure is "not decriminalizing," he said. "It's taking felonies and making them misdemeanors." Police still can arrest offenders -- and should.
Earlier this year, Gascon showed up at a Chronicle editorial board meeting with a chart that showed a rise in reported crimes from 44,675 in 2012 to 52,736 in 2014 -- but fewer arrests in 2014 (7,891) than in 2012 (7,946). And that was before Prop 47 was approved. "I don't want to go into what police officers are thinking or not thinking," Bastian told me. "The reality is that when arrests go down, it could have an impact on crime going up."
Thus continues the finger-pointing between San Francisco prosecutors and police.
Have realignment and Prop 47 made police feel that there's not much point in sticking out one's neck because the result could be that the criminal they arrest will go away for a matter of months, at the most, and the offender could be out of jail the next day? Palm Springs police Chief Al Franz told KESQ-TV that he calls the new regime "catch and release."
It was not that long ago that the 1994 voter-approved "Three Strikes and You're Out" initiative gave California a reputation as the over-incarceration state. In 2006, there were 163,000 inmates in state prisons. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce the state prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity -- which is one inmate per cell. Brown's realignment plan was a brilliant move politically, as it passed the hot potato of releasing inmates from Sacramento to local sheriffs.
In March, after three years of realignment and five months of Prop 47, the state prison population was down to 112,300. That's more than 50,000 fewer state inmates. A change that big cannot come without consequences -- and those consequences most likely are not safer neighborhoods.
What could’ve gone wrong?
In other words, they did the opposite of Giuliani's Broken Windows effort in NY and got the opposite results. UNEXPECTED®
Nothing wrong with that imho
It’s called game theory. The perpetrators instantly adapt to the new rules to reap the advantages and avoid the penalties.
Liberals always assume that what they see will remain invariant and their change will affect what they see in the way they reason it will. They are always wrong because the picture they are seeing is dynamic, not static.
There are two rational ways for a society to deal with drugs recognized as illicit, totally legalize them or make all purveyors subject to the death penalty (no more than 60 days for appeals) and all users subject to harsh fines and imprisonment. Anything in between promotes crime and the police state.
Dumb bastards.
When a thief steals from you, he steals your property and your freedom.
You had to work to get that money or TV or car. The thief didn’t.
He forced you to work for his benefit. That is slavery. That is stealing your freedom.
Thieves are tyrants and deserve to be treated as such.
“Reduce the state prison population to 137.5% of design capacity—which is one inmate per cell”.
Isn’t 137.5 % 37.5% more than 100%. Somehow my pea brain can’t figure out the math. And I made it out of eight grade.
Someone please explain the new math to me. Or is this just progressive malarkey.
If they catch some guy with a small about of personal use pot ONCE, that is one thing and shouldn’t ruin their life for it. It is repeat offender violent criminals and meth, crack, addicts etc. who have no job and steal from others to pay for their habit who needs to be behind bars.
Apparently the feelings of the voters overruled the reality. They get what they voted for.
It makes sense, from one who has lived there, before but no more.
1. Make all the guns that are currently produced ‘outlawed’.
2. Make it almost impossible, for the homeowner to own a firearm, whether by municipal or homeowners’ association ‘bylaws’.
3.Lessen the laws that punish the creep breaking in your back door.
4. Prosecute the homeowner for exercising their right to self-preservation, because the creep is busy exercising his government given right, to your stuff.
Try deporting the illegals and end the sanctuary cities.
Well, there ya go. We done stuck the butter knife into the electrical outlet and now we know first-hand why we were told not to do it.
The question is will we keep doing it?
It the Liberals who in the 70’s wanted us to unilaterally disarm, get rid of all our nuke deterrent. They actually believed if we did so the Russians would see we were serious about peace and would themselves dis arm.
This thinking is much the same as that of todays Liberals and their blind faith in the truly awful negotiated agreement with Iran.
Dumbing down the crimes because of their ethnicity is brilliant (sarc)
“They actually believed if we did so the Russians would see we were serious about peace and would themselves dis arm.”
I think this idea was actively promulgated to the useful idiots by the Russians. Notice they don’t allow the same kind of idiots access to the public in their own country. Because, every society has people who dream without reason. Note the (now dead) reporters who thought that they could criticize Putin. Being a useful idiot carries a heavy price. It’s better when the individual pays his own price, but the useful idiots in government make us all pay the price while, they, mostly, escape with golden parachutes to safe, lucrative press or university jobs.
Stupidity reigns supreme in California.
Hello third world.
Yes. The math is correct. A 100 bed prison would have 137 prisoners.
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