If you frequent this blog even semi-regularly, you have surely read at least a few posts regarding California's Proposition 47 and its ineffectiveness. By this time, it is widely known that Prop. 47, which reduces penalties for several felonies to misdemeanors, is a bad policy that has made California communities unsafe and "led to an increase in the number of crime victims," says Marc Debbaudt in this article in the SF Chronicle.
The "grim" FBI statistics show that the crime rate increased considerably in the state from 2014 to 2015. San Francisco earned the No. 1 spot for cities with the highest increase in property crime rates in the country and No. 8 for violent crime. Forty-nine other cities saw overall property crime increases, 24 of them in double-digits. For violent crime, 38 cities across California suffered an increase in violent crime, 34 in double-digits. Prop. 47 proponents assure us that it is not the measure that is responsible for such dramatic rises in crime rates, particularly property crime, but a slew of other factors:
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The "grim" FBI statistics show that the crime rate increased considerably in the state from 2014 to 2015. San Francisco earned the No. 1 spot for cities with the highest increase in property crime rates in the country and No. 8 for violent crime. Forty-nine other cities saw overall property crime increases, 24 of them in double-digits. For violent crime, 38 cities across California suffered an increase in violent crime, 34 in double-digits. Prop. 47 proponents assure us that it is not the measure that is responsible for such dramatic rises in crime rates, particularly property crime, but a slew of other factors:
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Proposition 47 proponents, such as Bill Lansdowne, a former police chief in San Diego and San Jose, have blamed the crime rate increase on police staffing shortages, social services cutbacks, mental health calls, and homelessness -- but those excuses don't fly. In the same time period that San Francisco and other California cities saw property crime rates increase, the next four largest states (Florida, Texas, New York and Illinois) all saw decreases in property crime. Every excuse singled out by Lansdowne exists in those states, but what they don't have is Prop. 47.Prop. 47 proponents' incessant dwelling on the cost of the criminal justice system and incarceration rather than the cost of crime to victims and society is as dangerous as the policy itself. The jig is up. It is time for proponents to recognize that the numbers are not lying to them, and Prop. 47 is not working. Debbaudt concludes:
Prop. 47 and the other reckless experiments in criminal justice reform such as prison realignment, merely shifted the cost from society at large -- which funds the criminal justice system -- to individual victims, carrying with it a vastly increased human price tag as penalties for criminal activity were eliminated ... That's the real tragedy of reckless experiments in criminal justice reform; the unnecessary creation of more crime victims.
Would/will the folks at CJLF work on a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 47?