No taxes for new prisons
As the state seeks to reduce overcrowding, voters favor sentencing modifications for three strikes and other nonviolent drug offenses. The economy plays a big role along with awareness of a futile war on drugs and harsh sentencing laws that didn’t work as expected. Tough political stances against crime and harsh sentencing laws that began in the 1980s during the crack and cocaine epidemic, and the three strikes law of 1994 have targeted nonviolent criminals for drug habit and shoplifting-related offenses minors and residential burglaries. The Supreme Court ruled the release of 33,000 prisoners due to cruel and unusual punishment related to health and safety issues where inmates are stacked in triple bunks. An inmate death every 8 days that could have been prevented with proper medical care did the trick.
With increased awareness that non-violent inmates, mostly for drug-related offenses, are becoming institutionalized, where an addiction becomes an affliction that is much harder to escape, where gangs and tattoos become the answer, forcing displaced and alienated inmates back into the neighborhood without any job placement or a new skill set equals the need for more and more prisons. The public has had enough on both sides of party lines with majorities of Democrats and Republicans voting more than 60% to modify sentencing for crimes like shoplifting and other misdemeanors, instead of raising taxes. to build even more prisons. Seventy percent said they would have no problem with early releases without sentence modifications for nonviolent offenders, according to a Washington poll.
In California there are already 33 state prisons. The most in the nation. California also has the worst recidivism rate in the nation with more than 70% of released inmates returning behind bars in three years. However, Nevada has the lowest rate of return for released prisoners because they have a job placement in sanitation jobs at the time of their release.
Linda DeVill of American Viewpoint said, “Voters are looking for solutions that don’t raise taxes or take money from education.”
It is time for our politicians to turn around. Smart on Crime has to include redemption and common sense about sentencing laws that consider the prison system as a whole. It makes no sense to send a drug addict without any prior violence to prison where violent criminals indoctrinate him into gangs. With Nevada leading the way with smart crime placement programs for inmates released on sanitation jobs, the rest of the country, starting with California, has to catch up.