I have to admit I have stopped watching political commercials. The commercial opposing Proposition 36 is only the latest reason why. It claims passing Proposition 36 will lead us back to “old failed” policy of the imprisonment of criminals and take spending away from “proven crime fighting strategies” like spending on mental health programs. These claims have been the stock in trade of the left in California, politicians like Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Rob Bonta, and others in charge of our justice system since 2010. And our crime rate has skyrocketed.
Here’s what been proven to work over the years. From 1960 to 1982, as prison sentences decreased, crime rates increased 500%. In 1982, Governor Deukmejian started pushing for prison construction and increased sentences for criminal behavior, and the crime rate increases disappeared (although the crime rate itself didn’t decrease). In 1994, the state passed Three Strikes, and by 1996, the crime rate dropped by 50%, basically back to 1960 levels.
This drove the Democrats in charge of Sacramento nuts. From 1995 to 2014, the Democrats did everything in their power to undermine Three strikes, first by not building prisons, then by passing dozens of laws reducing crimes from felonies to misdemeanors so that Three Strikes would not apply. They tried to get rid of Three Strikes by initiative in 2010, and that failed, so in 2012, they passed Proposition 36 (ironically) that undermined one of the key safety provisions of the law. As originally drafted, Three Strikes said that once a criminal had committed two serious or violent felonies, if they committed any felony after that, they were subject to the Three Strikes law. That Proposition 36 basically said that there would have to be a third victim of a serious or violent felony before the state would put them in prison for the rest of that criminal’s life. I predicted then that, because of that change, the crime rate would start to rise. It did.
But the left was not done there. They passed Proposition 47 in 2014, which moved a bunch of serious or violent felonies down to lesser felonies, to avoid the application of Three Strikes to those criminals committing these crimes. Anyone with half a brain could predict what would happen next, and it did. The crime rate skyrocketed. Fentanyl deaths increased to alarming level, roving gangs of criminal ransacked retail stores, and people in our cities were once again afraid to walk around the streets of their cities. Californians, due to the misguided policies of the Democrats in the Legislature and the left in California are no longer safe, in their homes or on the streets.
There are bad people in this world, they are not mentally ill. They are not socially or economically disadvantaged. They are not Jean Valjean of Les Miserables fame. They are just plain bad. They don’t get fixed by government programs, and if they are not separated from the rest of us by prison, they will continue to inflict their evil on those of us who just want to be safe.
Prisons work. They don’t deter others criminal from committing crimes, they don’t rehabilitate criminals, but they do take the bad guys in society and remove them from the rest of us. That makes us safe. The left is wrong if they say prisons don’t work. The crime numbers prove that. When you leave bad guys on the street, bad things happen, no matter how much the government spends on mental health programs.
Proposition 36 starts us back on the road to safety by replacing the misguided policies of the left and putting the criminals in our society behind bars and away from the rest of us. It is not the end of the fix, but it is the beginning to making California safe again.