It’s the last month of the legislative session in California, and a few advocates for criminal justice reform are knocking on doors and making their last pitches to legislators.
That includes Lily Hamilton with the Boundless Freedom Project, a group that works with people impacted by incarceration. They told a legislative aide about a bill that would cut back resources in state prisons where there are empty beds.
“They are continuing to have costs for power, water, staffing — and staffing includes not only correctional officers. That’s ancillary staff, facilities staff.”
Lily Hamilton, right, with Boundless Freedom Project discusses a bill with a legislative aide.Megan Myscofski/CapRadio
Hamilton was incarcerated for 15 years. They got out just in time to see protests in 2020.
“We saw politicians get out there and speak — big, bombastic speeches — and they were railing against injustice, and now they’ve gone quiet,” they said.
That means Hamilton and their colleagues are shifting their argument: They’re now leading with fiscal responsibility over social justice reform.
“The further we get away from the summer of 2020 and on, I think people are just less likely to have their eyes and ears open to these specific issues,” they said.
Some Democrats argue that the current shift towards more tough-on-crime policies is a natural correction after criminal justice reform policies became too extreme. Others say it detracts from evidence-based ideas.
Magnus Lofstrom, the policy director of criminal justice at the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California, said to understand it, you have to go back another decade.
“We passed a lot of reforms,” he said. “We have reduced incarceration notably here in California.”
California moved sooner than most states on criminal justice reform. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to bring down its prison population because of overcrowding in 2011.
That led to policy changes throughout the 2010s, including Proposition 47. It changed some theft and drug-related felonies to misdemeanors.
But Lofstrom said there isn’t much broad research about the effectiveness of those policies.
“We have done a lot of things,” he said. “What did work, and are there things that we’ve implemented that didn’t work?”
The state’s crime rates ticked up with the pandemic. It has also seen high rates of homelessness and overdose deaths from opioids. Lawmakers feel pressure to react.
“Policies that are being passed by our legislature or an elected official, for example, they are very likely to be driven by what the public opinions are,” he said.
This year, that translates to a November ballot measure, Proposition 36, that would roll back much of Proposition 47 and mandate addiction treatment. It’s backed by several major retailers, like Target and Walmart.
It also now has the support of several Democrats, like San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who spoke at a rally at the Capitol.
“We're here today to support Proposition 36, not because we want to go back to an era of mass incarceration, but because we want to go forward to an era of mass treatment,” he said.
Ten bills meant to discourage crime, mostly through higher penalties, also just cleared the California Legislature. Democrats sponsoring them say they offer an alternative to the more punitive Proposition 36.
The bills had bipartisan support, but some pushback from progressive lawmakers and members of the California Legislative Black Caucus, like Los Angeles State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas.
“These measures deepen mass incarceration,” she said. “And deepening mass incarceration is going in reverse of where Californians wanted us to go.”
She said better jobs, schools and access to health care in vulnerable communities will have a bigger impact than tough-on-crime laws.
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