A criminal-justice “reform” measure unleashes thousands of predators.
John Perazzo
Something amazing has happened in California. First, a brief background: Crime rates across the state, after a long period of steady decline, had reached fifty-year lows in 2014. Then, that November, a 60 percent majority of California voters—presumably incapable of accepting such good news without a measure of collective guilt—decided that it would be a really enlightened idea to pass Proposition 47, a ballot initiative bearing the cheery name “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”
The purpose of this measure was to downgrade many types of drug possession and property crimes from felonies (punishable by more than a year in prison) to misdemeanors (which often entail no prison time at all). For the benefit of squeamish skeptics, the self-assured proponents of Prop 47 condescended to explain that these reduced penalties would not only alleviate prison overcrowding, but would also make California's streets safer by placing drug offenders into warm-and-fuzzy treatment and counseling programs, rather than into disagreeable prison cells. If you think this sounds like a familiar old tune, you're quite correct. It was #1 on the left-wing hit parade throughout the 1960s, when it became the theme song of skyrocketing crime rates across the United States. And now the Golden Oldie is back, in the Golden State.
The tangible results of Prop 47 were both immediate and breathtaking. Within a year, there were some 14,000 fewer inmates in California's state prisons and local jails, just as the Proposition's backers had promised......."Proposition 47, it's cool,” Semisi chirps. “Like for me, I can go do a burglary and know that if it's not over $900, they'll just give me a ticket and let me go.” Ain't “criminal justice reform” grand?......
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