The politics of Proposition 47 as a scapegoat – Orange County Registry

In recent weeks, the blame for everything on Prop 47 has returned. Why?

It’s simple: it’s an election year.

California Republican politicians and pundits are stuck in the 1980s when it comes to crime, criminal justice, and policing. They think that exaggerating crime levels and scapegoating policies like Proposition 47. And in some jurisdictions, this is correct.

As a result, Republicans Kevin Kiley of Rocklin, James Gallagher of Yuba City, and James Patterson of Fresno introduced bills in Sacramento to completely or partially repeal Proposition 47.

Prop 47, for context, reduced a number of crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Notably, it had the backing of Newt Gingrich and Rand Paul at the time. It was passed in 2014 with almost 60% of the vote.

Kiley, unsurprisingly, is once again running for another office. That’s all he does, after losing races for Senate and state governor over the past few years. He announced his candidacy for Congress shortly after introducing the bill to repeal Proposition 47, which brought a lot of news stories despite the fact that everyone knew it had no chance of going anywhere. It’s not that. It’s about taking titles and reinforcing old stories. That is all.

And, let’s face it, for better or for worse (and I mean for the worse), in the ultra-orthodox, Republicans in Congress often seem at peace with being out of touch. and are pampering their shrinking base.

The reason Kiley introduced a pointless bill is the same as Democratic Congressman Rudy Salas of Bakersfield introduced his own bill to repeal Proposition 47. Salas, who is clearly in the pockets of the police and prison guard unions, is also running for Congress and wants to prove to Republican voters that he’s not like other Democrats, or whatever.

Now, having talked about this, politicians will do what they do. Being a scammer is in the job description. But the media contributed to this farce.

The Fresno Bee editorial board decided to jump last week to a total loss.

Ong Fresno called for Prop 47 to be put back on the ballot, after thoughtlessly quoting Patterson that, “The reason the crime statistics are down is because they changed the type of crime reported in the statistics. list.”

I’ll be helping the Fresno Bee and Patterson editorial boards. The California Department of Justice publishes crime reports, with explanations of what goes into the reports and even analyzes of crimes. You can go to oag.ca.gov/crime.

On page three of the 2020 Crime report in California, they may be surprised to find this note, “It is no longer possible to distinguish felony from petty theft. Therefore, it was decided to include the total number of petty theft crimes into the category of property crimes regardless of value. They may even be surprised to see information thefts broken down into several categories, including as low as $50 or less.

And, on record, the petty theft rate per 100,000 people has fallen from 1,538 since Proposition 47 passed in 2014 to 1,326 in 2020.