|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
California’s district attorneys are warning that the release of thousands of prisoners under a budget-cutting “reclassification” plan will result in an increase in crime.
The state Senate approved the prison bill on Thursday. It would reduce the state’s prison population by about 27,000 inmates through early release or letting nonviolent elderly or sick inmates serve out their sentences in homes or hospitals with GPS-monitoring devices.
The plan would reduce certain crimes from felony/misdemeanors to straight misdemeanors and create a “sentencing commission” to make changes to the state’s sentencing laws.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr joined with the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA), signing a letter that was delivered to the governor and legislature on Aug. 19 opposing the changes.
If it becomes law, the plan would trim $1.2 billion from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget, Carr said.
The bill would save $525 million through the early releases and another $665 million when the governor commutes some sentences of nonviolent illegal immigrants, who would be turned over to federal authorities for deportation.
Prosecutors say the policy amendments would be permanent, despite the temporary nature of the state’s fiscal crisis. The plan could potentially impact the operation of the Three Strikes law, according to the prosecutors.
“We cannot minimize the severity of certain crimes by allowing criminals to go free. Giving criminals an option to escape accountability and proper punishment for their crimes is a disservice to our community, and a serious threat to public safety. Further, passing this proposal without fully considering the concerns of the public is outrageous,” Carr said.
The proposal would convert the crimes of receiving stolen property, writing bad checks, and petty theft with a prior conviction from felony/misdemeanors, known as “wobblers,” to misdemeanors, reducing the severity of the crime and the length of the sentence, making way for the earlier releases of thousands of prisoners.
The changes would also alter the district attorneys’ ability to prosecute some crimes, they claim.
“We have previously noted that changing wobblers to misdemeanors carries a host of related consequences that will subvert prosecutorial efforts in numerous ways.
“For these offenses, we will lose the longer statute of limitations carried by felony crimes, the ability to obtain search warrants, and the ability to evaluate and charge offenders based not only on their present offense but upon consideration of whether they have prior serious or violent convictions,” the letter stated.
The plan would also create a sentencing commission that would delegate crucial policy-making decisions on criminal sentences to an unelected, unaccountable body — with a majority of members appointed by Schwarzenegger, the district attorneys said.
That provision would allow majority recommendations to become law unless affirmatively overruled by a majority of both legislative houses and the Governor and will undermine substantial improvements to California sentencing law made over the last 30 years, they said.
Victims could lose meaningful input into the sentencing process that provides “a measure of truthfulness and accountability in felony sentencing,” prosecutors wrote.
“We firmly believe that such a proposal is deserving of a full opportunity for review by the Legislature and the public,” they added.
State Assembly members debated the bill until midnight on Thursday and are in negotiations with the Senate to finalize a bill for passage, according to Richelle Noroyan, district director for Assemblyman Ira Ruskin. The Assembly will take up negotiations again on Monday, she said.
I agree that there will be more crime if so many are let out. The fact that they are released early will not be the reason.
They will commit crimes no matter if they are let loose on time or early.
The biggest joke of all time is “correctional facility”. There is no correcting anything; there is no rehab behind bars. Inmates are taught new ways to break the law/survive. Ask anyone who has been locked up and they will tell you the same. It is a jungle in jail/prison. The racial devide is the worst possible way you can imagine. You have to belong to a gang to survive or get killed.
I had to hang out with the woods. learned a lot about how to survive;
correction?
If you went in normal you come out an animal
If you went in like an animal nothing changes.
The DA’s are lying to the public! They are concerned that the public will know they have convicted 690 people under Three Strikes for simple drug possession, 351 for shoplifting and 181 for receiving stolen property. These crimes are actually misdemeanors but the law allows them to be treated as felony counts. So at least 1222 people have been sentenced to life in prison for these petty crimes. Each will cost $50,000 dollars each year to keep. Most never had any violent past. The DA’s are abusing their power and tuning California into a police state. Don’t buy into the fear tactics. Hitler used the same ones prior to world war II .
It is past time for legislators rather than judges to establish legal minimum standards for incarceration. Judges neither know nor care where the money comes from to pay the costs. Legislators, theoretically, must be concerned with costs. Prisoners are NOT entitled to all the comforts of home. I would suggest as guidelines the rigors and comforts of basic/boot training that are considered sufficient for those who defend us – those who offend us surely do not deserve as much. I would also suggest a law establishing special courts to hear prisoner complaints, staffed with judges competent to rule on treatment of prisoners, akin to the maritime courts that handle seagoing issues. Bob and Frank do not exaggerate. Take a jailer to lunch and you will lose yopur appetite at the absurdities they must live with.
When Rose Birdbrain was trying to empty death row, I suggested the next released killer me assigned to live with her – then I found out she lived one street over from her.
As for Bob’s point about inside, we have all heard about cellmate Bubba. Allowing prisoners to run the inside has to stop. It is now technically feasible to have 100% surveillance,and you don’t need trained professionals to be Big Brother. A gps bracelet on each prisoner would record any unallowed confluence, and the outside viewers could alert guards to any suspicious actions. The way now don’t work.
If we don’t lower the cost of keeping people locked up, that $1.2 billion in cuts will have to come from education or for services that provide help for the elderly and disabled. I would rather see home monitoring for drug offences and parole violation instead of seeing our schools cut further.
Releasing these people who are maladjusted anyway, whatever, and maybe especially if convicted under 3 strikes. In reality I think most of us understand 3-strikes could mean anything from 9-30 strikes in reality because no one is convicted of serves time that is not some kind of chronic offender.
The idea that we are locking up many harmless pot smokers is just that, a lot of smoke.
To release these people into neighborhoods that are already depressed and low on job opportunities, what the heck do we think will happen? People with no skills and almost zero support programs because they are also cut will just fullfill our worst expectations and cost us more money in the long term.
The people managing the state, and the country, and even the city have been relying on the garbage dump theory that you can just keep dumping costs on the people and they will always just have to pick them up and not be able to notive it. Well, do that enough and all systems start to fail with a very difficult road to repair.
Massive incompetence and malfeasance on the part of our leaders who have profitted along with their buddies. It is time to ask for that money back, x2, see how they like having costs dumped on them?
anon,
And your proof for this is?
Three strikes for nonviolent crimes is an idiotic waste of money. Life imprisonment is warehousing people instead of having them do the time and then be rehabilitated so that they can live on the outside.
Drug treatment is a cheaper and more effective way of handling the problem. Life imprisonment should be for vioent crime, not burglary or drug possession.
I’d rather have a parks back and decent schools instead of enriching the prison guard’s union.