"lock em all up" is a retarded view that is often held by right wingers because they know nothing about the system and think that they're safe, so "fuck em" to everyone else. The truth is that mass incarceration is extraordinarily expensive and a waste of taxpayer money. There needs to be a layered approach of jail, probation, parole, and finally prison, instead of "just stuff them all in prison". contrary to popular belief, most people don't engage in recidivism. people who commit 1 crime are not "bad apples" who need to be locked away forever. even the 3 strikes laws, which got gutted as overly harsh, recognized this. California is a weird state where Republicans were so successful in outflanking Democrats on crime, that the Democrats went all-in on the police state and started wholeheartedly pushing for mass incarceration. It is only very recently that Democrats have been brave enough to try to roll back some very limited laws.
That doesn't mean I'm "soft on crime". All the BLM rioters should have been jailed and weren't. All the petty criminals in blue cities should be jailed and aren't. The problem with the system isn't short jail terms, it's the excessively long sentences given for certain crimes and the ridiculously large number of "enhancements" so that a crime that might get you 5-10 years in other states could end up with 50+ years in California. And the DAs see it as a mark of pride to get the biggest numbers they can instead of being reasonable. The judges, who are almost all former DAs, happily go along instead of moderating.
You can read Heather Mac Donald's work on how disastrous this whole reduction has been on California.
idk who that is but I live here and I know better than she does. Realignment was a much-needed roll back of the absurd police state that California had become.
the primary result of realignment was to shift prisoners to county jails. the secondary result was that some of the lowest level offenders in county jails and prisons were shifted to probation or parole. people with serious felonies, violent felonies, or sex offender status were excluded from these reductions.
today, California is roughly in the middle of the pack for incarceration rates, without grossly overcrowded prisons. that's a better result. we needed the USSC to step in because the Republicans here are stuck in permanent "lock em all up" mode and the Democrats are cowards.
This is probably the only time I have ever agreed with the liberals on the USSC, and it's because I saw the clusterfuck of the system with my own eyes, and saw the complete failure of any "political" solution.
Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493 (2011), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that a court-mandated population limit was necessary to remedy a violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment constitutional rights.
"lock em all up" is a retarded view that is often held by right wingers because they know nothing about the system and think that they're safe, so "fuck em" to everyone else. The truth is that mass incarceration is extraordinarily expensive and a waste of taxpayer money. There needs to be a layered approach of jail, probation, parole, and finally prison, instead of "just stuff them all in prison". contrary to popular belief, most people don't engage in recidivism. people who commit 1 crime are not "bad apples" who need to be locked away forever. even the 3 strikes laws, which got gutted as overly harsh, recognized this. California is a weird state where Republicans were so successful in outflanking Democrats on crime, that the Democrats went all-in on the police state and started wholeheartedly pushing for mass incarceration. It is only very recently that Democrats have been brave enough to try to roll back some very limited laws.
That doesn't mean I'm "soft on crime". All the BLM rioters should have been jailed and weren't. All the petty criminals in blue cities should be jailed and aren't. The problem with the system isn't short jail terms, it's the excessively long sentences given for certain crimes and the ridiculously large number of "enhancements" so that a crime that might get you 5-10 years in other states could end up with 50+ years in California. And the DAs see it as a mark of pride to get the biggest numbers they can instead of being reasonable. The judges, who are almost all former DAs, happily go along instead of moderating.
idk who that is but I live here and I know better than she does. Realignment was a much-needed roll back of the absurd police state that California had become.
the primary result of realignment was to shift prisoners to county jails. the secondary result was that some of the lowest level offenders in county jails and prisons were shifted to probation or parole. people with serious felonies, violent felonies, or sex offender status were excluded from these reductions.
today, California is roughly in the middle of the pack for incarceration rates, without grossly overcrowded prisons. that's a better result. we needed the USSC to step in because the Republicans here are stuck in permanent "lock em all up" mode and the Democrats are cowards.
This is probably the only time I have ever agreed with the liberals on the USSC, and it's because I saw the clusterfuck of the system with my own eyes, and saw the complete failure of any "political" solution.