Backers of Proposition 36 would have you ever consider that California’s prison legal guidelines appeal to thieves and that public security isn’t attainable with out lengthy jail sentences for individuals holding unlawful medicine for his or her private use. They provide a poll measure that might rescind voters’ good reforms, partially refill prisons and revive the disastrous struggle on medicine.
They declare their answer will ramp up drug therapy and fight homelessness, when it’s not less than as prone to do the other. It will suck up a lot of the funding Californians just lately approved for mental health care, and gut programs which have efficiently slashed recidivism and introduced much-needed trauma restoration companies to crime victims.
Proposition 36 is a fallacious flip. Voters saw through an earlier rollback try 4 years in the past and could be sensible to say “no” once more.
The issues the measure claims to deal with — retail theft, drug abuse and homelessness — are to some extent 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 line with other states and made drug possession for private use a misdemeanor, punishable by as much as a 12 months in jail.
The brand new measure would permit 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 law’s notorious excess — 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 generally ought to underneath 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, reasonably than replace their practices to suit the legal guidelines they’re requested to implement. Californians ought to anticipate police to observe the legislation, reasonably than the opposite method round.
Police have 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 process forces and first-rate detective work.
Now daily reports of arrests — actually thousands of them — are as common as videotaped robberies have been only a 12 months in the past. They don’t evoke the identical emotional response, but the continued string of arrests is mind-boggling in its scope and is being followed by prosecutions.
Simply Google “Los Angeles,” “theft” and “arrest” to seek out countless tales of individuals whose crimes made headlines a 12 months 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 take care of these crimes — every 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, that means the accused must full court-supervised drug therapy or be sentenced to a multiyear jail or jail time period.
This part relies on a number of speculative or specious assumptions — that the accused is addicted, that drug courts forestall relapse, that efficient therapy is broadly obtainable and that individuals 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 major problem with opioids and methamphetamine all of a sudden appeared once we eradicated felony possession prices. If that have 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 almost everyone relapses after the primary time — supposedly would go to jail, however jails in Los Angeles and most other large counties are legally overcrowded and jailers want that house 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 an alternative of offering funding, the measure would deplete it. Proposition 47 has thus far saved the state greater than $800 million in jail spending, and that cash is redirected to fastidiously monitored anti-recidivism programs, 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 downside, together with auto theft and burglaries, and it has just lately begun to take care of it utilizing the ample instruments presently supplied underneath state legislation. We do have a critical drug downside that requires a considerate response and massive sources. Proposition 36 pretends the duty might be achieved on a budget. It could’t. It’s extra phantasm than answer. Vote no.
