Another Battle Over Crime Looms In California
LAPPL News Watch
December 5, 2019
No California ballot would be complete without at least one measure about crime and punishment and 2020 will be no exception. A referendum seeking to overturn California’s landmark ban on cash bail in criminal cases will once again test voters’ sentiments about the treatment of accused lawbreakers.
During previous decades, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, voters endorsed a tough, lock-‘em-up attitude, culminating in passage of the state’s famous — or infamous — three-strikes-and-you’re-out law aimed at repeat offenders.
At some point — roughly a decade ago — voter attitudes about crime softened and criminal justice reform advocates began winning in the political arena.
When Jerry Brown returned to the governorship in 2011, he strived to undo some of the punishment laws he had signed three decades earlier by reducing penalties for crimes deemed to be nonviolent, diverting more offenders into probation rather than putting them behind bars and making it easier for felons to win parole.
Law enforcement officials objected, saying that fewer offenders behind bars would imperil the public, but in 2014, Brown won passage of a key ballot measure, Proposition 47, encompassing his reforms.
1 comment:
It really is simple. More bad guys in the slammer means less bad guys on the streets. A commercial bail system does a fair job at getting people to court and costs the government very little. It is NOT unfair to poor people. It is maybe unfair to poor people who are accused of committing crimes. Letting them out to commit more crimes while they await trial is not fair to the public at large.
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