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Health & Fitness

Realignment Continues to Drive up Crime in California (Part 1)

The Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has been tracking the impact of Governor Brown's Realignment Law (AB109) since it took effect in October 2011. Here are some of their findings.

Perceptions of crime are changing in California. The very real threats that we experienced leading up to the mid 1990’s have been replaced by complacency in the early 2010’s. Society seems to have forgotten that the threat of crime diminishes our social structure, creates fear in our neighborhoods, leaves victims of property crimes feeling vulnerable and victims of violence broken or dead. That, and concerns about runaway budgets, financial mismanagement, and the role of government have created a climate in which our elected leaders believe, and people support, the notion that it is better to release criminals back into society rather than the build the prisons necessary to house convicted criminals.

On November 6, California voters will choose whether or not to modify California’s Three-Strikes-and-You’re Out law when we vote on Proposition 36. Thousands of three-strike prisoners, individuals who have at least two prior serious or violent felony convictions on their rap-sheet may be eligible for re-sentencing hearings that can put them back onto our streets.

 If passed in November, Proposition 34 will retroactively overturn California’s death penalty in favor of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Prop 34 proponents say that this will guarantee, among other things, that remorseless baby killers, cop killers, serial killers, and mass murderers will die in prison. What they fail to mention is that on September 30, Governor Brown signed Senate Bill 9, which can overturn LWOP sentences for 309 remorseless killers currently housed in our prison system.

Find out what's happening in Gilroywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 October represents the one-year anniversary of Assembly Bill 109, Governor Brown’s Prison Realignment Program. Realignment is supposedly the most benign of the measures being promoted in the current trend towards prison reform, because under Realignment, inmates who are classified as non-serious, non-violent, and non-sexual offenders are sent to local jails instead of California state prisons or put under community supervision. However, these Post-Release Community Supervision inmates (PRCS) could have prior convictions for murder or sexual offenses as long as their most recent conviction was for a non-serious, non-violent, and non-sexual crime.

 The Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has been tracking the impact of Governor Brown’s Realignment Law (AB109) since it took effect in October 2011. Here are some of their findings.

Find out what's happening in Gilroywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

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