Grocery Stores Are Pushing California To Be Tougher On Crime. Here’s Why
LAPPL News Watch
September 17, 2020
In 2003, Brian Beinlich stood before a judge in an Orange County courtroom, barely comprehending what had happened. The judge had just told Beinlich he was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in prison. He would not be eligible for parole for 81 years. His crime? Stealing two bottles of Hennessy from a Costco in Fountain Valley, Calif., and waving a box cutter at the security guards who chased him down.
A wave of criminal justice reforms in California in recent years sought to ease thousands of harsh sentences like the one Beinlich received, reduce the state’s bloated prison populations and create more opportunities for parole and rehabilitation. But if several large grocery store chains have their way, a measure on the ballot this fall will roll back some of these reforms, increasing penalties for shoplifting and making it harder for those convicted of certain non-violent property and drug crimes to get early parole.
While
Proposition 20 was launched and financed primarily by law enforcement
groups, grocery outlets served as early partners in the effort. They are
taking a controversial stance at a sensitive time for corporate
America, when companies of every stripe have taken pains to demonstrate
support for the Black Lives Matter movement and its goals of tearing
down racist systems of policing and mass incarceration.
2 comments:
Just because a judge CAN impose a harsh sentence for something like this doesn't
t mean he should. Unless there are some additional circumstances not mentioned here (and there may well be), that judge should be removed.
He should have taken two bottles of Mad Dog. Nobody would have cared.
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