Prop 47 – A Really Bad Law That is Causing a Crime Wave! (Part 2)

8 Responses to Prop 47 – A Really Bad Law That is Causing a Crime Wave! (Part 2)

1. Tina says:

   Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 9:59 pm

   I went to the site, “Crime Survivors for Safety & Justice” to look around. This groups claims to be working with police departments both inside and outside of California. Rehabilitation, both pre-crime and post crime, seems to be the theme.

   The <a href="http://www.safeandjust.org/Policing-Innovations&quot;.Policing Innovations page contained the following (emphasis mine):

   CSJ Report: Breaking the Cycle of Low-Level Crime – In an era of change, our guide showcases innovative models for reducing low-level crime and costs, including community partnerships that replace traditional arrest-and-detain practices with new progra(s) that better break the cycle of crime

   President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (Final Report) – On December 18, 2014, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order establishing the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The Task Force Members sought expertise from stakeholders and input from the public as they worked to identify best practices and make recommendations to the President. The Task Force submitted an initial report to the President on March 2, 2015 and released the final report on May 18, 2015.

   Given the apparent size of this organization it appears to have been in the works for some time. I find it amusing that this bunch thinks they’ve invented the wheel. Rehab programs in various forms have been tried before. Involving big city police officers in this gentler approach to crime prevention amounts to “fundamentally transforming” their jobs. Where once they served to protect law abiding citizens by removing bad elements from our streets they now are expected to serve as councilors for the criminally dysfunctional.

   It’s unconscionable that rapists and child abusers would be let out of jail, rewarded for their criminal activity, for the sake of another social experiment. But this is the airy fairy thinking of the California progressive…it’s upside down. The rehab project doesn’t seem to be going well either, at least in terms of “crime prevention.”

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2. Harold says:

   Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 8:21 am

   Reminds me a lot of Prop 30…. misinformation, misinformed voters and, lies and more lies.

   However maybe as they get released we can bus them to one of the many sanctuary cities in California, what say you liberals?,

   Your the ideology that wanted them out, now what’s your plans to help rehabilitate them and keep the rest of California safe, you do have a working plan right, and you ready to do it?

   So the board doesn’t light up with PC-BS, the questions are rhetorical, we know you have no such intention or plans.

   Reply
3. Tina says:

   Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 11:37 am

   RADICAL ALERT!

   A semi-related article in The American Thinker today informs about a feminist movement supported by Hillary Clinton, Gabrielle Giffords, and Michael Bloomberg to disarm the nation. The focus of this activist movement is convincing women to demand and support gun control laws with the ultimate goal of gun confiscation. Hillary spoke about this several days ago when <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/hillary-clinton-calls-for-australia-style-gun-confiscation-calls-it-a-buyback&quot;.she invoked an Australian law.

   Organizations that have been formed for the express purpose of disarming America include, “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America” and “Everytown for Gun Safety” are portrayed by our complicit media as grassroots inspired by caring and concerned moms but have been generated by Democrat operatives who will make sure Hollywood actresses become the face of the movement.

   Are any of these organizations non-profit and if so did the IRS target them for special scrutiny and delay their applications? Were they asked more extensive questions including personal questions about their members and the subject of their prayers? Were their businesses targeted for harassment by agencies such as OSHA, BATF, and the highly partisan Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)? Catherine Englebrecht would no doubt like to know if any of these organization heads was, “fined (OSHA) over $20,000 even though “the agency wrote that it found nothing serious or significant.”

   What will these organizations do to further their cause? They will follow the usual progressive methods of bullying and harrassment of businesses:

   The Moms boycott and bully businesses into imposing, through store policy, greater restrictions than those enacted by citizen vote or otherwise imposed by the laws of the jurisdictions in which those stores operate.They want to ban any kind of carry on college campuses, ban open carry where open carry is legal and seek to lengthen the waiting time imposed by federal law before a customer can take possession of a legally purchased firearm.

   Whether it’s forming sanctuary cities, legislating in the courts, or harrassing individual citizens and businesses the radical progressive left has chosen to operate outside of the legislative system with it’s checks and balances. This is rule by the mob and it’s becoming more and more prevalent as time goes on.

   CATO:

   if harm reduction is the goal, policymakers should pause to consider how many crimes–murders, rapes, assaults, robberies–are thwarted by ordinary persons who were fortunate enough to have access to a gun. Gun control proponents cannot deny that people use guns successfully against criminals, but they tend to play down how often such events take place. The purpose of this map is to draw more attention to this aspect of the firearms policy debate.

   Two additional points are worth noting. First, the map is not comprehensive. Criminals will often flee the scene when they discover that their intended target has a gun. With no shots fired, no injuries, and no suspect in custody, news organizations may report nothing at all. Thus, it is important to remember that news reports can only provide us with an imperfect picture of defensive gun use in America. Second, when a citizen is able to shoot an attacker or hold a rapist or robber until the police arrive, it is very likely that more than one crime has been prevented because if the culprit had not been stopped, he could have targeted other citizens as well. The bottom line is that gun owners stop a lot of criminal mayhem every year. (see chart at link)

   One thing that strikes me about radical feminists is that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Their intentions are based on an emotional response to events. They are not supported by all women. In fact a growing number are purchasing and learning to use guns for self-protection. Natalie Foster of the website “The Girl’s Guide to Guns” illustrates sincere efforts by women to learn how to safely and effectively use guns for protection.

   Watch for these gun grabbing women to be prominent in the complicit media in the months to come.

   Reply
4. Tina says:

   Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 11:51 am

   Semi-related article #2, “Sword-wielding masked man in deadly attack on Swedish school.” Where there’s a will there’s a way:

   A sword-wielding madman wearing a “Star Wars” mask killed a teacher and seriously injured at least four students and another teacher Thursday at a school in Sweden, according to reports.

   The lunatic burst into the school in Trollhättan, north of Gothenburg, and began his maniacal attack early Thursday, the Daily Mail reported.

   He began attacking responding cops, who quickly shot him. He was hospitalized in serious condition.

   Stopped by a cop with a gun. Too bad the teacher wasn’t trained and armed for self defense.

   Reply
5. Libby says:

   Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 12:40 pm

   “When a career criminal steals a firearm, or a suspected sexual predator possesses date rape drugs, or a carjacker steals yet another vehicle, ….”

   This is your idea of low level offenders? No wonder your knickers are twisted. If we can’t agree on defined terms, we can’t discuss this at all.

   Reply
6. Tina says:

   Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 1:38 pm

   Libby thanks to Democrat leaders, including Brown, these are the criminals deemed “low level” enough to get early release en masse from our prisons. They are the criminals who now don’t even receive prison time but instead are sent to special programs for rehab. So the “terms” have already been defined by law, haven’t they?

   CBS News, “1,400 ‘lifers’ released from California prisons in last 3 years”:

   SAN FRANCISCO – Nearly 1,400 lifers in California’s prisons have been released over the past three years — a sharp turnaround in a state where murderers and others sentenced to life with the possibility of parole almost never got out.

   Since taking office three years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown has affirmed 82 percent of the parole board decisions, resulting in a record number of inmates with life sentences going free. … More than 80 percent of lifers are in prison for murder, while the remaining are mostly rapists and kidnappers.

   Cal Watchdog:

   n 2011, AB 109, the prison realignment law, was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Brown. AB 109 was supposed to shift “low-level,” “non-violent,” and “non-sexual” inmates from state prisons to county jails. Many inmates then were shifted to county probation departments for post-release supervision.

   But AB 109 also required some felons released from prison be placed on post-release community supervision instead of state parole. A largely ignored result of AB 109 is that nearly half of these “non-violent offenders” had previously been incarcerated for serious crimes. But parole supervision is now based entirely on an inmate’s current conviction, not on cumulative crimes for which he had served prison time in the past. …

   …Instead of releasing prisoners, California could reduce its corrections costs significantly by transferring inmates to lower-cost facilities out of state. “Expanding this strategy by transferring an additional 25,000 low- to medium-security inmates to such facilities—5,000 per year for five years—would result in an estimated savings of between $111 million and $120 million for the first year of the prisoner transfer plan, and between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion in savings by the end of year five,” according to a study by the Reason Foundation. …

   …Due to sweeping changes in California’s criminal justice system, paroled rapists, molesters and other sex offenders statewide are often doing little or no jail time for violating the terms of their release, according to state records and interviews with parole agents, according to Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.

   The law also prevents habitual criminals convicted of new felonies such as assault, auto theft, drug dealing, identity theft, fraud and commercial burglary from receiving prison sentences. Instead the offenders are get sentences in overcrowded county jails, probation or “treatment” in county-managed rehabilitation programs

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   • Libby says:

     Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 3:36 pm

     Tina, we will have to see something more substantial that mere assertions by entities that are plainly out to 1) yank your chain, and …

     “California could reduce its corrections costs significantly by transferring inmates to lower-cost facilities out of state.”

     2) … lobby for the prison-industrial complex.

     Reply
7. Tina says:

   Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 7:09 pm

   We are are we?

   How about you back up what you had to say to Jack instead. You insinuated that the crimes he listed were not low level crimes: “This is your idea of low level offenders?”

   Snotty retorts are hardly “more substantial.”

   I suppose you favor the soft on criminals approach to law enforcement?

   An article by Christopher Petrella and Alex Friedmann at Prison Legal News expands on the problems with “Realignment”:

   On May 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an order by a three-judge federal court requiring the state (CA) to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of design capacity within two years to alleviate overcrowding that resulted in unconstitutional medical and mental health care. [See: PLN, June 2011, p.1]. California Governor Jerry Brown had called the court’s order “a blunt instrument that does not recognize the imperatives of public safety, nor the challenges of incarcerating criminals, many of whom are deeply disturbed.” …

   California has spent billions of dollars and decades in federal court due to poor conditions in its state prisons, but the problems it has been desperately trying to ameliorate are now trickling down to local governments as county jails are forced to deal with thousands of additional prisoners.

   Recently, California-based law firms advocating for prisoners’ rights have sued or threatened lawsuits against a number of counties due to Realignment. The suits allege that the egregious conditions that first led to legal intervention against the state’s prison system – overcrowding, poor medical and dental care, and inadequate mental health treatment – are now being repeated at the county level.

   Jails that were originally designed for short-term stays are now being flooded with thousands of new prisoners, many of whom are serving longer sentences and need robust rehabilitative services that counties currently do not have the capacity to provide. Fresno, Riverside, Alameda and Monterey counties have already been sued.

   …High-profile crimes committed by some released prisoners have led to public outrage. For example, in June 2013, a few months after Dustin James Kinnear, 26, was released from prison and placed on community supervision under the Realignment initiative, he stabbed to death a 23-year-old woman on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because she refused to give him a dollar. Critics argued that Kinnear, who has mental health problems, would have been incarcerated at the time were it not for Realignment.

   Previously, on December 2, 2012, former prisoner Ka Pasasouk, who was on community supervision under Realignment, shot and killed four people in Los Angeles. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty while relatives of the victims have filed suit against the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and Probation Department, claiming county officials had failed to properly supervise Pasasouk after he was released from prison. …

   In May 2014, a state Senate budget subcommittee opposed a proposal to grant an additional $500 million to counties for jail construction and expansion, instead voting to provide such funds for construction projects and programs “designed to provide rehabilitative services and housing for individuals convicted of crimes.” This would potentially include treatment programs, transitional housing, and substance abuse and mental health care facilities.

   So the deck chairs have shifted and so has the way crime is considered. When prisoners magically become “parolees” and rehab refugees and felonies are reduced to a lesser crime it’s easy to see how crime statistics could be manipulated dowward.

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