Backers of Proposition 36 would have you ever imagine that California’s prison legal guidelines appeal to thieves and that public security isn’t doable with out lengthy jail sentences for individuals holding unlawful medication for his or her private use. They provide a poll measure that might rescind voters’ sensible reforms, partially refill prisons and revive the disastrous warfare on medication.
They declare their answer will ramp up drug therapy and fight homelessness, when it’s at the very least as prone to do the other. It might suck up a lot of the funding Californians lately accepted for psychological well being care, and intestine applications which have efficiently slashed recidivism and introduced much-needed trauma restoration companies to crime victims.
Proposition 36 is a improper flip. Voters noticed via an earlier rollback try 4 years in the past and could be clever to say “no” once more.
The issues the measure claims to handle — retail theft, drug abuse and homelessness — are to a point intertwined. However regardless of proponents’ claims, they’re unrelated to Proposition 47, a wise 2014 prison justice reform measure that introduced California’s theft legislation in step with different states and made drug possession for private use a misdemeanor, punishable by as much as a yr in jail.
The brand new measure would enable a 3rd misdemeanor theft to be charged as a felony. For an individual with two prior petty thefts, stealing a slice of pizza — to borrow the instance of the three-strikes legislation’s infamous extra — may lead to a counterproductive multiyear sentence with none new assurance of a law-abiding return to society on the finish of the time period.
Police may cease petty thieves now in the event that they made misdemeanor arrests, as they will and typically ought to below present legislation. However they don’t, as a result of they argue it’s not price their time. They’re asking voters to alter the legal guidelines to suit their accustomed practices, somewhat than replace their practices to suit the legal guidelines they’re requested to implement. Californians ought to count on police to comply with the legislation, somewhat than the opposite manner round.
Police had been caught flat-footed as smash-and-grab robbers, South American vacationer burglars, copper wire thieves and on-line patrons and sellers of stolen items wreaked havoc with new modes of crime. It took too lengthy, however the authorities lastly responded with activity forces and first-rate detective work.
Now day by day experiences of arrests — actually hundreds of them — are as frequent as videotaped robberies had been only a yr in the past. They don’t evoke the identical emotional response, but the continuing string of arrests is mind-boggling in its scope and is being adopted by prosecutions.
Simply Google “Los Angeles,” “theft” and “arrest” to search out limitless tales of individuals whose crimes made headlines a yr or two in the past lastly being introduced down.
Proposition 47 had nothing to do with these crimes, and Proposition 36 wouldn’t have stopped them. That’s as a result of theft, residential housebreaking and grand theft are already felonies, punishable with lengthy jail sentences. The legislation because it exists is acceptable to cope with these crimes — each time legislation enforcement is able to use it.
As for repeat drug offenders, Proposition 36 would create a “treatment-mandated felony” on a 3rd possession cost, which means the accused must full court-supervised drug therapy or be sentenced to a multiyear jail or jail time period.
This element is predicated on a number of speculative or specious assumptions — that the accused is addicted, that drug courts stop relapse, that efficient therapy is broadly obtainable and that folks with substance use issues will kick their behavior even when they haven’t any dwelling, job sources or prospects. It additionally assumes that California’s significant issue with opioids and methamphetamine abruptly appeared after we eradicated felony possession expenses. If that had been the case, all these different states that also cost felony possession wouldn’t be struggling the identical drug issues. However they’re.
The usual for treating meth dependancy is six months of residential therapy adopted by outpatient follow-up, however the ready lists for therapy beds are lengthy, and Medi-Cal covers solely 30 days (60 to 90 with particular approval). Twenty-two counties haven’t any residential therapy in any respect. Proposition 36 offers no funding. Backers say cash may come from Proposition 1, barely adopted by voters in March — however that’s imagined to pay to deal with psychological sickness, not simply dependancy restoration.
Individuals who fail to finish therapy — and virtually everybody relapses after the primary time — supposedly would go to jail, however jails in Los Angeles and most different giant counties are legally overcrowded and jailers want that area for violent and harmful criminals, not individuals convicted merely for drug possession, who in all probability could be launched to the road. That in all probability means extra homelessness, as a result of even quick jail stays strongly correlate with misplaced monetary and emotional stability.
As a substitute of offering funding, the measure would deplete it. Proposition 47 has up to now saved the state greater than $800 million in jail spending, and that cash is redirected to fastidiously monitored anti-recidivism applications, trauma restoration for crime victims and faculty applications. Extra felony convictions means decrease financial savings and fewer spending on prevention and sufferer companies.
California does have a critical property crime drawback, together with auto theft and burglaries, and it has lately begun to cope with it utilizing the ample instruments at the moment offered below state legislation. We do have a critical drug drawback that requires a considerate response and large sources. Proposition 36 pretends the duty will be achieved on a budget. It may possibly’t. It’s extra phantasm than answer. Vote no.
