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Given the folly of a criminal justice system that warehouses thousands of aging prisoners at great cost long after nearly all have ceased to be threats to society, California Democrats had good cause to pursue reforms at the ballot box. Unfortunately, their most high-profile measures are deeply flawed.
Enacted in 2014, Proposition 47 classified many nonviolent property and drug crimes as misdemeanors. Yet with the threshold of misdemeanor theft set at $950, it incentivized not just bad behavior but a constant wave of brazen, open crime. It’s why stores in the state now lock up so many products — if they’re able to stay in business.
Enacted in 2016, Proposition 57 was drafted in starkly incompetent fashion. Sold to the public as a way to more fairly treat “nonviolent felons” by making it easier for them to win parole, here are among the many crimes it somehow considers “nonviolent”: rape of an unconscious person, severe domestic violence and hit-and-run resulting in death.
With public anxiety over crime steadily building, the case for reforming the reforms has never been stronger. In an interview last week with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan made this case convincingly. Three of her key points:
— The impact of Proposition 47 is even worse than it appears because so many stores have stopped reporting thefts, believing it is pointless.
— The early release of so many very violent criminals in California has had a traumatic effect on those they raped or beat up. “We hear from our victims all the time that the state is pulling the rug from under them and that their pain, their voice is not being considered,” Stephan said.
— Additional “reforms” enacted by the Legislature have also had huge unintended repercussions, starting with a law that took effect Jan. 1 that decriminalized loitering for prostitution. “If you just go down at 3 p.m. to Dalbergia Street [in San Diego] and Main Street [in National City], you will see a line of cars picking up young people that are dressed with almost nothing on,” Stephan said. “It’s like a modern-day slave market. It’s absolutely appalling.”
The DA believes that if state lawmakers don’t fix these problems, voters will try to do so with a far-reaching ballot measure — one that could return California to the draconian “three strikes and you’re out” era and undo many positive changes that lived up to their reform billing. “Three strikes,” remember, was the result of a 1994 ballot measure that got 72 percent of the vote. All it will take for a “son of three strikes” to go before voters is one crime-weary billionaire willing to fund a signature-gathering campaign. Attention, Gov. Gavin Newsom: Is this something you want to happen on your watch?
