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It was a ballot proposition. That was the stated reasoning of its proponents but assigning motivation for why a referendum came out the way it did is a fools er
by SllX 4y ago
It was a ballot proposition. That was the stated reasoning of its proponents but assigning motivation for why a referendum came out the way it did is a fools errand. The actual reasons why millions of people voted the way they did will invariably be multi-causal and include things no one in their right mind would consider condensed down to one “Yes” vote.
I remember that vote, and crowding in the prisons wasn’t even a consideration for how I voted because if we wanted to resolve that issue we would build more prisons; therefore it was a useless justification in either direction. In truth, the sum of our choices in California does not make it look like we care about crowding in the prisons, only that we care about looking like we care. It’s been more than 15 years since the first time I read an article about how our prisons are overcrowded, and they’re still overcrowded.
- ilostmyshoes 4y agoWe already have the highest prison population of any country on earth, why would you think the solution is building more prisons?
- SllX 4y agoBecause you either stop prosecuting people or you build more prisons, or you stop pretending to care one way or the other about how crowded the existing prisons are. Even if you think there’s some measure of criminal justice reform that could be done to reduce the headcount in the future in the State of California’s prison system, you build the damn prisons now to address specifically: overcrowding in the prisons, and then if some future opportunity arises to raze some of the older prisons because they are no longer needed because the prison population has been reduced, then you do that. Or you don’t, and we haven’t, so that’s clearly what our choice is: not caring in the abstract. Given that, I have no patience for the people that pretend otherwise.