What forces Republicans and police to lie about Proposition 47? – Orange County Register

Eight years ago, California voters passed Proposition 47, which reduced some low-level felonies to misdemeanors.

By doing so, Californians have sent a clear message that, no, they don’t think drug possession is simply a felony conviction or all that comes with a felony record, including barriers to employment and housing.

Instead, Californians assert that they prefer light penalties ranging from six months to one year in prison (depending on the crime) for crimes including low-level theft, and prefer to put more emphasis on crime prevention and treatment.

With fewer people incarcerated, Proposition 47 has resulted in savings being reinvested in statewide crime prevention efforts.

And yet, since it appeared on the ballot, hardline anti-crime groups, right-wing pundits and increasingly unrelated Republican politicians have lamented Proposition 47 non-stop.

Obviously why. Their lack of concept of justice did not lead to the disproportionate mass incarceration of poor, Black and Latino people for petty crimes. Nor have they shown any sign that they have advanced intellectually on public safety issues since about the 1980s.

Take, for example, Republican Representative Jim Patterson of Fresno.

“We’ve all seen break-ins, we’ve seen an increase in overdoses and deaths from fentanyl and so we’ve seen the consequences of what the Project says. Law 47 did,” he said in a videotapes third release. “That is why my colleagues and I have introduced a bill that repeals Prop 47 and goes back to a time when these criminals were in jail. They are not allowed to run rampant in our residential areas. “

Consider each of Patterson’s statements.

First, consider the idea that Prop 47 is responsible for burglaries.

I asked Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law, and society from the University of California at Irvine about such a connection.

Kubrin points to the obvious: it’s been eight years since Prop 47 was passed, and a lot has happened since then unrelated to Prop 47, including pandemics, civil unrest, and the effects prolonged effects of the strikes. Linking recent burglaries, specifically to Prop 47, is difficult, given the latency and myriad confounding factors.

But more specifically, Kubrin notes that these types of crimes have been and are happening across the country, including in Illinois and Minnesota, where Prop 47 clearly doesn’t apply.

“[A]and most relevant, Prop 47 applies to low-end thefts (under $950) but the main feature of these thefts is that they occur in high-end retail establishments and involve merchandise stolen is often worth tens of thousands of dollars,” adds Kubrin. “So Prop 47 doesn’t apply here.”

This latter part, I think, is key.

We’ve heard politicians like Patterson drones about how Proposition 47 is responsible for break-ins. But the connection is meaningless because the crimes involved go far beyond the narrow scope of Prop 47. That’s why, for example, people arrested in connection with break-in burglaries have convicted of theft, grand theft. , receive stolen property and loot.

These are all pretty basic stuff. Either Patterson didn’t consider any of these things, in which case Patterson and his staff didn’t complete their jobs with basic competence, or he was aware of all of these. but knowingly go ahead and sell completely pure lies. Who knows?

It was a similar situation to his claims of a fentanyl overdose and death.

Would someone please inform Patterson that overdose is already a growing national problem – that is, yes, it is happening in other states where Prop 47 doesn’t apply – since from before Proposition 47?

The drug use crisis didn’t start because California stopped sending many people to prison for simple drug possession. That’s because drug traffickers and dealers are now cutting back on heroin and other drugs with cheap, ultra-powerful black-market fentanyl, or selling fentanyl while calling it heroin or something else.

Patterson would never do this, but if Patterson really cared about reducing deaths, he would. overdose prevention program such as the champions of Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, because drug addicts will continue to use drugs despite. If Patterson cared about their lives, he would advocate for overdose prevention programs so that such people don’t take fentanyl to cut heroin overdose and can get guidance from medical professionals in case they do. so.

But given the amount of research Patterson puts into the fundamental question of whether burglaries are a violation of Proposition 47, I suspect Patterson doesn’t have much to say about any pricing either. any of these values.

Let’s now turn to Patterson’s claim that throwing people in jail for a low-level crime is a preferable alternative.

I suspect that very few Californians really want to go back to the days of low-level confinement, especially when the cost of holding someone in California’s prisons is now six figures. each year.

I asked Kubrin whether repealing Proposition 47 and re-committing felonies like drug possession and low-level theft would actually have a substantial public safety benefit.

Kubrin’s answer? “No. … What it will do, however, is reverse the delinquency reduction that the state has made over the past decade. In the worst-case scenario, we could start filling up our prisons. themselves with low-level inmates, perhaps eventually reaching the overcrowded conditions that led to reforms like the reorganization and Proposition 47 in the first place.”

That seems correct to me. The reality – and only a brief mention of the inhumanity of placing low-level offenders back in California’s poorly run prison system, as Republicans like Patterson don’t care that – it doesn’t seem particularly bright to advocate trying to increase the prison population while it is still limited in population.

Repealing Prop 47 would also lead to a reversal of the slow but steady progress made by reinvesting savings from prison sentence reductions into programs and services.

These programs include programs overseen by the Los Angeles County Department of Health’s Office of Redirection and Improvement, the Orange County Health Care Agency, the City of Rialto, and the Riverside University Health System. The act of providing services ranging from mental health services to housing support.

The California State and Community Corrections Commission has noted that statewide, such programs have been successful in increasing both employment and independent living and assisting in reducing recidivism for those participate in the justice system.