Robberies up 23 percent in San Francisco. Property theft up 11 percent in Los Angeles. Certain categories of crime rising 20 percent in Lake Tahoe, 36 percent in La Mirada, 22 percent in Chico and 68 percent in Desert Hot Springs.
It's too early to know how much crime can be attributed to Prop 47, police chiefs caution, but what they do know is that instead of arresting criminals and removing them from the streets, their officers have been dealing with the same offenders again and again. Caught in possession of drugs? That usually means a misdemeanor citation under Prop 47, or essentially a ticket. Caught stealing something worth less than $950? That means a ticket, too. Caught using some of that $950 to buy more drugs? Another citation.
"It's a slap on the wrist the first time and the third time and the 30th time, so it's a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card," said Shelley Zimmerman, who became San Diego's police chief in March 2014. "We're catching and releasing the same people over and over."
Officers have begun calling those people "frequent fliers," offenders who knew the specifics of Prop 47 and how to use it to their advantage. There was the thief in San Bernardino County who had been caught shoplifting with his calculator, which he said he used to make sure he never stole the equivalent of $950 or more. There was the "Hoover Heister" in Riverside, who was arrested for stealing vacuum cleaners and other appliances 13 different times over the course of three months, each misdemeanor charge followed by his quick release.
There was also the known gang member near Palm Springs who had been caught with a stolen gun valued at $625 and then reacted incredulously when the arresting officer explained that he would not be taken to jail but instead written a citation. "But I had a gun. What is wrong with this country?" the offender said, according to the police report.
As you will see as the story continues, Rabenberg, following one arrest-and-release after the next, wound up brandishing a knife at a man named Zempko who tried to help him.
"He needs help," Zempko told the officers, and they asked for his phone number and said they would call as part of their investigation. For a few days, Zempko waited and wondered: If they asked him to testify, would he push for leniency or a strict sentence? Which would be better for the city? Which would be better for Rabenberg?
But the police never called. The arrest had been for possession of drugs and brandishing a deadly weapon -- now misdemeanors under Prop 47. Rabenberg was booked into jail and released three days later.
Get that. Brandishing a deadly weapon is now all but legalized. Wonderful!
Rabenberg has gone missing. As I said, sooner or later, he'll wind up hurting himself or someone else. When he does, it's unlikely to make any news at all.
To those supporting sentencing reform, people like Rabenburg, and Rabenberg's next victim, are just ciphers. They might as well not exist. Better to throw the next Very Sophisticated Party at the Very Highbrow Law School so that reformers can congratulate each other on how humane they are.
Actually, I would argue that it DID change some offenders' behavior -- just not in the way that Prop 47 backers may have expected or hoped for:
"There was the thief in San Bernardino County who had been caught shoplifting with his calculator, which he said he used to make sure he never stole the equivalent of $950 or more."
It strikes me as strange that the prosecutors in these stories make it sound like there's nothing they can do, when in fact there is something they can do: if they're really concerned, they can stop agreeing to plea bargains that result in low sentences. Misdemeanors in California aren't punishment-free or ticket-only offenses; they carry sentences of 6 months to a year in jail. Brandishing a weapon can get you 12 months.
Similarly, there's no requirement that people charged with misdemeanors be immediately released from jail. Bail for misdemeanors can be set as high as tens of thousands of dollars. If a defendant is already on probation, the jail can hold him or her without bail until the probation violation is resolved.
Now, if the jail is releasing these guys because of overcrowding, that's another story, and that may be a story worth exploring, but it's not entirely accurate to blame Prop 47 for stories like this if the real story is not enough jail space and misdemeanors being pled out for a few days in jail instead of months or years.
All that being said, I think Prop 47 is flawed in several ways, one being the lack of any incentives to get drug treatment. I think it would work a lot better if it required, say, a year of in-custody drug treatment in lieu of a year in prison for drug-addicted defendants.
- Victor
I've been saying for years that the answer for California is to build more jails AND spend more on drug treatment and similar programs (that, for good or ill, have been shown to work better when coerced).
I don't think it's the prosecutors who want to see this revolving door. I think the paucity of jails simply leaves no choice.
As I think you also have seen, I believe in much less plea bargaining, if I had my way. Plea bargains beat up the truth and very often cut sweet deals. Unfortunately, I don't have my way.
Any way you slice it, the evidence is becoming clearer each day that "sentencing reform" in our nation's largest state is a disaster. We need to learn from this.
Perhaps I can count on your support for AG under President Rubio so this mess doesn't happen at the federal level?
There is no "if" about it. Realignment and Proposition 47 resulted in lots of people being sentenced to county jail who would otherwise have gone to state prisons, and the jails in many counties were already overcrowded. A sentence to county jail is now virtually meaningless, and revolving-door admissions are common.
This is not a side effect, or incidental, or an unintended consequence. The cynical soft-on-crime crowd had this in mind all the time, and they have the power to block serious jail expansion efforts with state money in the legislature.
Bill - I think you mean "President Trump."
Kent - Do you have any support for your assertion that "the cynical soft-on-crime crowd had this in mind all the time," or is that just your personal belief?
- V
Victor: In 2011, Governor Brown signed AB109, the so-called public safety realignment law, which released over 27,000 so-called low level offenders into California communities. The law made auto theft, commercial burglary, assault, identity theft, fraud and most other property crimes punishable only by time in county jail. Well before Proposition 47 converted most drug dealing and gun thefts into misdemeanors, most county jails in California were completely full and Sheriffs were releasing thousands of felons early and not holding most misdemeanors past booking. One of hundreds of stories about this is here: http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-ff-pol-brown-prisons-20140622-story.html#page=2
The District Attorneys can do nothing to stop this. No California county can afford the cost of a trial for even a fraction of the thousands of new misdemeanors created by Proposition 47, and even if they could, our county jails are already overcrowded with felons no longer eligible for prison.
Recent history has proven that when the consequences for criminal behavior are reduced, the result is more crime, including more violent crime. In California we are relearning that simple lesson right now.
Once upon a time, juries were instructed that people are presumed to intend the natural consequences of their voluntary acts. Presumptions are now verboten, but the principles underlying them remain correct. If you point a gun you know is loaded at somebody's head and pull the trigger, it is a fair inference that you intended to kill him.
The backers of these measures knew very well that the jails were already overcrowded and that sending them more prisoners would mean early releases on a massive scale.
Michael - I'm familiar with realignment, but thanks. And Prop 47 made most drug possession, not drug "dealing," a misdemeanor. As far as I'm aware, selling illegal drugs is still a felony. Also, I don't think Prop 47 created "thousands" of new misdemeanors. I haven't counted individually but it's probably well under a hundred
So if the problem, as we all seem to agree, is the lack of county jail space, seems like the answer is to build more jail space, along with greatly expanded drug treatment. I would support both of those.
- V
Victor: Possession of drugs for personal use in California has been a diversion-offense since 2000. Drug users do not even go to county jail, but are diverted to a community program. So far, after 15 years of treatment, drug use is up in California. So much for the effectiveness of treatment. Even possession of date rape drugs is a misdemeanor under Prop 47. You are absolutely right and I misspoke, Prop. 47 did not create thousands of new misdemeanors, it created thousands of new misdemeants. Do you really believe that many of them should be prosecuted and put in county jails or sent to treatment programs that do not work? Who is going to pay for that, the folks who who just had their ID or gun stolen by a misdemeant? By the way if you read the article I posted above, you learned that prison costs in California have increased not decreased.
Michael - If no one has gone to jail for drugs since 2000, then Prop 47 shouldn't have made any difference at all, correct?
I'll accept for the sake of argument your assertion that drug use is up in California. As I'm sure you know, referring to "treatment" generally is basically meaningless. Some types of treatment work; some types of treatment are garbage. That doesn't mean that treatment generally doesn't work. In fact, treatment can be highly effective.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376871602000145
As I said, my problem with Prop 47 is that it removed a penalty for using drugs (i.e. prison), without supplying anything to replace it, like meaningful, and compulsory, treatment. Having seen the effect that treatment can have on an individual's life firsthand, I'm not as quick as you to dismiss it out of hand as ineffective.
- V
Although the presumption is no longer permitted, I believe it's still OK to instruct that, "The jury may infer that a person intends the natural and probable consequences of his acts."
Like you, I think this is obviously true. It's one reason I'm convinced that a segment of those favoring sentencing reform actually wants the additional crime that, with our astronomical recidivism rates, "reform" is certain to bring about.
The larger segment of reformers is, true, simply engaged in denial or wishful thinking, two of the most powerful forces in human life. But there is a component that believes the USA is the Great Satan -- a country whose moral callousness and cruel racism has EARNED it the harm it will get from more crime.
I wouldn't go that far. My inference of intent, just to be clear, is that the proponents of the two measures pushing state prison inmates to county jails intended that the time actually served be even shorter than the time sentenced, and that jail overcrowding to achieve that was part of the plan.
Victor, I agree that compulsory treatment in a program that has been demonstrated effective in a methodologically rigorous way (which most studies in this field are not) is a valuable tool and often the correct disposition.
The problem is that once you remove the jail sanction, you lose the most effective way of keeping addicts in treatment. That is why the "treatment not jail" slogan is so terribly wrong. Even though treatment is an alternative to jail, it needs jail as a backup to be effective.