No f**king sh*t, Sherlock …
“The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” isn’t living up to its promise. Also known as Proposition 47, the California ballot initiative, which was approved in November 2014 with 60 percent of the vote, downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon was the rare prosecutor who pushed for its approval. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “What we have been doing hasn’t worked, frankly.”
Gascon spokesman Alex Bastian told me, “The voters indicated that possessing small amounts of narcotics” should not constitute a felony. Californians don’t want three-year sentences for drug possession. I don’t, either, but on the ground, the legal fix is not living up to its hype. Prop 47 has made it easier for drug offenders to avoid mandated treatment programs. The measure reduced penalties for the theft of goods worth less than $950. Habitual offenders know that, critics say, and they’ve changed their habits to avoid hard time. The measure’s approval also prompted the state to free some 3,700 inmates.
That’s 3700 people whose felony sentences were now subject to an immediate reduction to misdemeanor and granted terminal disposition — freed with no probation required.
Prop 47 took effect immediately after passing.
In San Francisco, theft from cars is up 47 percent this year over the same period in 2014. Auto theft is up by 17 percent. Robberies are up 23 percent. And aggravated assaults are up 2 percent, according to San Francisco police spokesman Carlos Manfredi. Burglaries are down 5 percent.
The City of Angels saw a 12.7 percent increase in overall crime this year, according to the Los Angeles Times; violent offenses rose 20.6 percent, while property crime rose by 11 percent. Mayor Eric Garcetti says Prop 47 may explain Los Angeles’ change in course from crime reduction to crime increases. […]
Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation sees Prop 47 as a toxic extension of Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2011 “realignment” policy. Realignment switched the responsibility of incarcerating nonserious, nonviolent, non-sex-offender felons from state prisons to local jails. Then Prop 47 whittled away at the definition of what constitutes a felony. “The most commonly committed felonies no longer carry a prison sentence,” Rushford told me. If the police catch someone, they know “they’re just going to cite him and let him out again.” If a crime isn’t serious enough to rate a felony, “how much money are you going to spend on it?”
When I went out on patrol of homeless encampments with San Francisco police officers earlier this month, more than one officer suggested voters repeal Prop 47 if they want fewer squatters in the city.
Bastian took issue with the suggestion that Prop 47 essentially decriminalizes petty crimes*. The ballot measure is “not decriminalizing,” he said. “It’s taking felonies and making them misdemeanors.” Police still can arrest offenders — and should.
Sure, an officer can arrest on misdemeanors – but that person will (98% of the time) be booked then cite released because the county jails are already full with prisoners doing “County Prison” under Prison Realignment (and make no mistake, those released state prisoners DO include violent offenders and sex offenders) so there is little room for commercial burglars and drug addicts. Indeed, many will be just cited in the field in a practice that is being referred to as “catch-and-release.”
*And contrary to Bastian’s huffy about “well, they are still misdemeanors” is at least one important felony was wiped completely out of the penal code: PC666, petty theft with priors. If one was a career commercial burglar who was caught at it more than three times, all those prior convictions meant you were now in felony territory and would be spending time in state prison.
Today? Well, you can take your booster bag to the local mall and steal to your heart’s content — as long as your take is $949 at each store you can rack up as many misdemeanor petty thefts as you like. All you’re going to get is a citation – oh maybe overnight in jail or a fine when you show up at court (if you show up).
You should see the huge stacks of citations in my office. Plus the hundreds of Prop 47 petitions we are processing each week.
In 2006, there were 163,000 inmates in state prisons. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce the state prison population to 137.5 percent of design capacity — which is one inmate per cell. Brown’s realignment plan was a brilliant move politically, as it passed the hot potato of releasing inmates from Sacramento to local sheriffs.
In March, after three years of realignment and five months of Prop 47, the state prison population was down to 112,300. That’s more than 50,000 fewer state inmates. A change that big cannot come without consequences — and those consequences most likely are not safer neighborhoods.
Ya think?
Brilliant.
I’m not saying prop 47 wasn’t bad, but I think a bigger reason for increased crime is the open borders policies of the last half dozen years.
Lee
That does factor in — a significant part of our prison/jail population IS indeed illegal aliens.
Perfect storm of conditions.
When you make more felonies into misdemeanors, you incentivize crime for all manner of criminals.
Couldn’t the State of Calif take to formally teaching the commission of crime in the public schools, doing so in the same soulless and joyless manner in which it teaches the quest for political freedom in the United States, thus inadvertently incentivizing the little kiddies to pursue a life of upright respect for property and their fellows in order to escape the dictates of The Man? The schools seek to make criminality cool, and achieve the opposite?
Greetings:
Sometimes, language is part of the problem. I’ve wondered about that whole “career” criminal concept. I mean that I can’t convince myself that it’s up in the morning and off to crime work. I see at as more if a predatory type of behavior. While getting through the day, whether doing honest work or not, an enrichment opportunity presents itself that cannot be resisted and Voila as Las Français might say.
So, I kind of see limiting the predatory opportunities as a big part of the fix. The parenting and educational standards currently in vogue are unlikely to prove sufficient.
Opportunities can’t always be taken on sight. A lot of even petty crooks put some degree of planning into their crimes — casing a place, sizing up a mark. Just because you see it on TV doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen in real life, the real crooks are just less telegenic and only slightly smarter than the actors.
I like the show Bait Car. One perp goes, “oh man, you guys don’t play cops and robbers fair.”
11B40
There are all levels to the career criminal – from the cruder “smash and grab” predator you describe to some very sophisticated conspiracies to defraud people of their property (from ID theft rings to extensive welfare/tax fraud, etc)
One thing all of them have in common is the basic belief that anyone who plays by society’s rules is a sucker. Wolves gotta eat and there’s a whole bunch of sheep for the taking.
These people are not going to change, so best we can do is keep them separated from the rest of society as much as possible.
Too bad there aren’t any more islands we can send them to.
Amen, Darleen, Amen.
Greetings, especially Darleen and McGehee:
I don’t disagree with either of you. Besides provoking some other observations, I have been wondering, with the current growth of our multi-form welfare system, if there isn’t some kind of subsidizing effect to the rather low-level criminality I addressed because I don’t really understand the economics of it. Is the “underground” economy really so developed, if that’s the word, that such criminals can make a living ???
Obviously in these politically correct days, there’s no interest in investigating or reporting on how criminals do their economics, so I’m a bit intrigued. But, I certainly agree that the Graybar Hotel is a better answer than the progressive left’s compassionate and polite approaches.
Lastly, I seem to remember that the New York City (perhaps Transit) Police had a significant success with its use of “Decoy Cops” back in the ’70s or ’80s, drawing out the casual, opportunistic criminals. Kind of like the way that storekeeper in Fergusson, MO drew out St. Michael Brown by putting those cigars on the shelf.
I suspect that, like bikers, most crooks have “honest” incomes, and just supplement same with the odd heist or caper. These days though, said “honest” income may mean hitting up the baby-mommas, who’re on welfare.
And then of course there’s organized crime, most of whose members are political consultants on the side.
No penal expert but, when it comes to prison overcrowding it seems to me that one thing that could be done is to have shorter terms but make them firm 2 year or 5 year terms for non violent offenders. Violent offenders their own prison and throw away the key.
I get the drug possession thing–such victimless crimes aren’t really crying out for long sentences–but you can bet leniency on thievin’ will just result in more thievin’. I hate thieves almost as much as I hate Illinois nazis.
They say it is just stuff but, I had to work to earn the cash to buy it. Is the thief/law going to give me back my time? Theft is a battery as far as I am concerned.
Greetings, “Jim in KC”: ( @ August 17, 2015 at 12:19 pm )
Back in the Bronx of the early sixties, I had a passing basketball acquaintance with a heroin addict who was still kind enough to inform me that he “didn’t have a drug problem. He had a money problem. Because if he had the money, he could find the drugs.”