California voters approved laws that facilitated crime

 NY Post:

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California’s criminal-justice system is broken and state voters helped to break it.

But voters had help from deceitful activists and politicians who tricked them into thinking they were voting for greater public safety.

One of those deceivers is George Gascón, now district attorney of Los Angeles County, where nearly 10 million residents in 88 cities are living with the full consequences of the 2014 initiative Gascón co-authored, Proposition 47.

The authors named the proposed law The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.

It promised to save money on costly incarceration and spend the savings on mental health and education programs.

With a favorable ballot description written by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, it passed 60% to 40%.

Under Proposition 47, property thefts valued at less than $950 became an automatic misdemeanor, even if the stolen item was a handgun.

The measure also made incarcerated felons eligible for resentencing and release if their past crimes retroactively qualified as misdemeanors.

Californians quickly discovered that the promised “Safe Neighborhoods” had a lot of car break-ins.

Two years after Prop. 47 passed, then-Governor Jerry Brown decided to promote his own criminal justice reform initiative.

Proposition 57 increased parole and “good behavior” opportunities for felons convicted of a “nonviolent felony offense,” a term that conveniently was left undefined.

Supporters named the measure “The Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016.”

Harris wrote another favorable ballot description and Brown led a campaign that outspent opponents by roughly 15 to 1.

It turned out that the list of crimes considered “nonviolent felony offenses” includes rape of an unconscious person, supplying a firearm to a gang member, hostage-taking, human trafficking, domestic violence with trauma, and attempting to explode a bomb at a hospital or school.

Voters had an opportunity in November 2020 to approve an initiative that would have reformed Propositions 47 and 57 by reclassifying specific crimes to allow tougher penalties.

This was Proposition 20.

The initiative would have helped undo so much of its predecessors’ damage, but it went down in defeat, 62% to 38%.
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While it should be clear that these laws were a costly mistake, California voters do not seem eager to correct the mistake and businesses within the state are being robbed and customers will likely have to pay higher prices for goods and to cover the businesses increased cost of insurance. It is also giving people another reason to leave the state.