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It’s useful, when there’s 12 confusing propositions on the ballot, to find an underlying idea to help you put at least a few of them in a pattern or context. And here’s one. The best way we voters can fight the most wasteful and destructive bureaucracy in our state – one that costs us 10 billion each year and keeps a death-grip on the balls of our Governor and legislators of both parties – I speak of course of our Prison-Industrial Complex – is to vote YES on 5, NO on 6, and NO on 9.
The Times wrote this about us last week (not mentioning our propositions)
The California Prison Disaster
The mass im
prisonment philosophy that has packed prisons and sent corrections costs through the roof around the country has hit especially hard in California, which has the largest prison population, the highest recidivism rate and a prison budget raging out of control.
According to a new federally backed study conducted at the University of California, Irvine, the state’s corrections costs have grown by about 50 percent in less than a decade and now account for about 10 percent of state spending — nearly the same amount as higher education. The costs could rise substantially given that a federal lawsuit may require the state to spend $8 billion to bring the prison system’s woefully inadequate medical services up to constitutional standards.
The solution for California is to shrink its vastly overcrowded pri
son system. To do so, it would need to move away from mandatory sentencing laws that have proved to be disastrous across the country — locking up more people than protecting public safety requires…
…State lawmakers, some of whom are fearful of being seen as soft on crime, have failed to make perfectly reasonable sentencing modifications and other changes that the prisons desperately need. Unless they muster some courage soon, Californians will find themselves swamped by prison costs and unable to afford just about anything else.
This is the classic illustration of why we unfortunately need the initiative process, for important jobs our legislators don’t have the guts to undertake. It’s not only being afraid of getting labeled “soft on crime,” it’s also the millions of dollars of contributions our governor and legislators get from the construction industry (which has built 21 prisons here since the 90’s) and the prison guards’ union (the more poor schmucks there are in prison, the more overtime the guards make!) More outrage over the flip…
From California Progress Report: According to The National Council on Crime and 
Delinquency, the U.S. incarceration rate is four to seven times that of other western nations such as Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany. Currently, there are approximately 2.2 million incarcerated in the US, costing us $55 billion a year. Just as troubling, the racial disparity that exists within the prison industrial complex is a glaring indictment of America’s failure to provide equal access to education and employment to all races.
What You Can Do
Proposition 5 would improve drug treatment programs, and let non-violent drug offenders (17% of the prison population) out into treatment, saving the state BILLIONS. The prison guards’ union have dropped their planned recall of Governor Schwarzenegger in order to focus on defeating this initiative; they’ve spent $1.8 million against it so far, they value their overtime that much. Vote YES on Proposition 5.
Propositions 6 & 9, both so-called “tough on crime” measures, would cost the state billions more in increased prison time and need for new prisons, taking away that money from schools and children’s healthcare. Vote NO on Proposition 6 & 9.
P.S. Vern’s ever-evolving Proposition picks:
YES on 2, 5, and 11
YOUR CALL on 1a, 3, and 12 (nice ideas that I don’t think we can afford)
NO on 6, 7, 9 and 10
HELL NO!!! on 4 and 8!
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