Pubdate: Mon, 26 Oct 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: George Gascon
Note: George Gascon is district attorney and former chief of police 
for San Francisco, and former assistant chief of police for the L.A. 
Police Department.

GIVE REFORM A CHANCE

The State Is Moving Toward a Sustainable Public Safety System.

More than 40 years ago, President Nixon first used the term "war on 
drugs" to illustrate his commitment to reducing the illegal drug 
trade. A decade later, President Reagan declared that illicit drugs 
were a threat to U.S. national security and American values. In the 
name of these values, zero-tolerance laws were enacted across the 
country that made possession of drugs for personal use a felony.

Despite good intentions, the long conflict has decimated many 
communities, leading the United States to incarcerate more people per 
capita than any other developed nation. It shattered budgets and 
crippled our ability to distinguish the dangerous from the nuisance.

 From 1980 to 2014, the number of people behind bars nationwide for 
nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,000 to more than 300,000. 
California spends more than $10 billion a year on corrections, and in 
the last 30 years the state has built 22 prisons but only one 
University of California campus.

Our prisons were so overcrowded that California was forced to 
downsize its prison population by 23% between 2006 and 2012. Critics 
warned of consequences for releasing this many offenders, but violent 
crime and property crime rates dropped 21% and 13%, respectively, 
during this time. In the last few years, California has taken 
additional steps to curb its overreliance on incarceration and comply 
with a court order that deemed our prisons so overcrowded that 
conditions were unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. For example, 
Proposition 47, which 60% of Californians supported in 2014, reduced 
simple drug possession and five petty theft offenses from felonies to 
misdemeanors. The $1.25 billion in estimated savings over five years 
will be reinvested in education, truancy prevention, treatment and 
victim services.

Tough-on-crime critics, predictably, have come out swinging, arguing 
that Proposition 47 is the cause of a recent increase in property 
crime. But this assertion defies logic. From 2007 through Aug. 31 of 
this year, the state has reduced its prison population by 43,000, but 
only 4,402 prisoners were released under Proposition 47. It's 
farfetched at best that the release of these relative few, who were 
responsible for some of the lowest-level crimes, is causing this 
increase. Crime rates fluctuate over time, but overall property crime 
is at a 50-year low.

The extraordinary level of discontent with Proposition 47 from a 
majority of law enforcement officials is not surprising. Virtually 
everyone working in law enforcement today - myself included - cut our 
teeth during the war-on-drugs era. We've never experienced another 
approach, and after decades of jailing people for simple drug 
possession, it's difficult to embrace alternatives.

Many in law enforcement believe misdemeanor arrests are ineffective 
because the consequences are comparatively mild. But in a 
post-Proposition 47 world - as has always been the case - good, 
hardworking cops should not try to predict the outcome of an arrest. 
Declining to make arrests for misdemeanor crimes is bad for the 
community, public safety and offenders who need help. In San Diego, 
for example, where police continue to make misdemeanor arrests for 
drug possession, the city continues to see flat or decreasing crime rates.

Meanwhile, the 4,402 people released from prison under Proposition 47 
are saving California more than $770,000 a day. There are also more 
than 35,000 Californians who have asked the courts to change their 
old felonies to misdemeanors, and an additional 123,087 people who 
have petitioned the courts to alter their current sentences.

Before Proposition 47, people convicted of a felony for possessing 
drugs for personal use often found themselves housed with more 
hardened offenders. They were inevitably released without having the 
root cause of their addiction or mental illness addressed. What's 
worse, their felony convictions would often preclude them from 
finding work, as employers are 50% less likely to respond to 
applicants with records.

California's broken prison system churned out less-employable 
individuals with unaddressed conditions, who were perhaps inclined to 
resort to more serious criminal behavior. Is it any surprise that the 
state recidivism rate reached nearly 70% in 2005?

One person who petitioned to have an old felony - possession for 
personal use - reduced to a misdemeanor under Proposition 47 is 
Sholonda Jackson, who spent her 20s addicted to crack and in and out 
of prison. Jackson has been sober for 11 years. She's married and has 
earned her bachelor's degree in social work. She hopes to pursue a 
master's degree, but before Proposition 47, she was worried that her 
felony convictions would preclude her from pursuing her dream of 
working at a Veterans Affairs hospital.

"People said I was hopeless, but that's not true. I don't think 
there's such a thing," Jackson told me.

Drug abuse, like mental illness, should be treated primarily as a 
public health problem, not a criminal problem. Our overreliance on 
prisons has proved to be the most destructive drug of all. It is time 
to wean ourselves off this dependence. Proposition 47 is giving 
people such as Sholonda Jackson hope, and it's helping California 
course-correct away from mass incarceration and toward a sustainable 
public safety system.

These articles are part of an Opinion section series on how 
Proposition 47, one year after its passage, has changed the state.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom