A California committee is recommending an end to the state's controversial 'three strikes' law and changes to lifetime prison sentences without the possibility of parole.
have left Democratic lawmakers under fire for endorsing more progressive criminal justice policies, though the policies are not clearly connected to current crime trends. Critics point to laws such as Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that lowered certain drug and theft felony offenses to misdemeanors, and Proposition 57, a 2016 initiative to expand parole eligibility, as evidence of California’s missteps.In San Francisco, Dist. Atty.
Robberies fell 13.8% in 2020, according to the California Department of Justice, as did the rape rate, by 8.2%. The total arrest rate also plunged by 17.5%, while the“Public safety has to be paramount, but responding just to sensational crimes ... does not necessarily reduce crime,” said state Sen. Nancy Skinner , a member of the penal code revision committee.
“They don’t really have a balanced group, it seems,” said Michele Hanisee, president of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County. “They’re in lockstep with what they want to accomplish, which is across-the-board reduction in incarceration without necessarily a reasonable consideration of victims’ rights and the seriousness of some of these offenses.”
Susan Burton, the founder of A New Way of Life Reentry Project in Los Angeles County, sees it differently. Broader policy changes, though, will take time. Some of the committee’s recommendations require a simple majority vote in both houses of the Legislature. Other proposals would require either a two-thirds majority vote by lawmakers or a statewide ballot measure.
In the meantime, members have outlined other ways to soften the three-strikes law, a 1994 ballot measure to double a sentence or send someone to prison for life if they are a repeat offender with a “serious” or “violent” felony record. California prisons now hold more than 33,000 people serving three-strikes sentences, according to the committee’s report, and 80% are people of color.
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