With all the fire news, there has been little or no discussion about the fact that on Monday, the California state Assembly passed their depressingly emaciated version of the Corrections reform package:
For all his hectoring, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t able to get a single Republican to vote for the thing.
Yet, just to get a pathetic 41 Democratic votes, the bill was reduced to something with the meat and heft of four-day-old runny jello.
Gone is the much needed creation of a sentencing commission.
Gone also is the notion of allowing around 6,300 low-level and/or old and sick inmates out to serve their remaining months—not free—but in alternate custody.
Gone are some of the sensible sentencing reforms.
And more.
All-in-all, the Assembly bill managed to cut $220 million less from the corrections budget than the Senate bill did.
Not that the Assembly bill means all that much. Until the two bills can be reconciled….we got nothin’.
As for the reasons why the Assembly cannot agree on a sensible prison reform bill, one need look no further than some of the remarks made by assembly members about the bill, as reported by the California Progress Report::.
Assembly member Martin Garrick (R-Solana Beach) strongly opposed the six-week incentive offered inmates for completion of a rehabilitation program, which has been shown to reduce recidivism, .
“What’s this about prisoners getting good time credit,” he said. “You’re in jail. You’ve already proven you’re bad.”
And my personal favorite:
The reason for opposing the Assembly bill cited by Assembly member Joel Anderson (R-El Cajon) was a firefighter training course that would train inmates for deployment to help fight the state’s annual wildfires “I don’t want a state-sanctioned jail break in my back yard,” said Anderson. “And that’s what would happen.”
Meanwhile, on a related topic: the three judge panel gave the state until the middle of September to come up with a plan to reduce the prison population by 40,000 inmates over the next two years. Tuesday, the Governor appealed that ruling, asking for a extension—at the same time filing with the California Supreme Court to request the delay.
The problem with our state, like many states and the nation as a whole is that we have liberal lawyers running the show. For many years they have showed they are not competent enough to act in the best interest of our state or nation yet the media manipulated population is too stupid to act as strongly as needed on the issue.
That being said I think you and people that think like you Celeste are living in a dream world. I have a tee-time to make so I’ll post on your above comments later. One thing though, that Planning Commission was only to be a commission that would reduces sentences right? That’s what I’ve read but please correct me if I’m wrong.
House the prisoners in courtrooms and let the judges deal with them.
We can quickly lower the prison population and the over-crowded schools and county hospitals if we could have Obama start enforcing federal immigration laws.
This will have the added benefit of, providing jobs more jobs in California for legal citizens and legal foreign workers.