Pubdate: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248 Note: From MAP: The three editorials, below, are printed together in the newspaper. Cited: Proposition 5 http://www.prop5yes.com Cited: Proposition 36 http://www.prop36.org Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prop36.htm (Proposition 36) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?247 (Crime Policy - United States) NO ON PROPOSITION 5 Proposition 5 Means Well, but the Measure Aimed at Rehabilitating Addicts Would Create Chaos. Proposition 5 follows in the tradition of California ballot measures lined with good intentions and stuffed with disaster. It lures voters with a comforting mirage: a revamped and rational policy for treating drug addiction as an illness and confronting it through rehabilitation instead of punishment. But that's not what it would deliver. If it passes, Californians would soon learn that they had swept away the state's few successful diversion programs, inflicted chaos on the parole system, layered on a staggering new bureaucracy and set back the cause of modernizing drug treatment. On the surface, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act seems to be the logical next step after Proposition 36, a measure Californians passed in 2000 that mandates treatment instead of prison for most people convicted of drug possession. But this step isn't so logical. Under Proposition 5, an addict caught breaking into a home would be exempt from incarceration if his reason was to feed his addiction and if he agreed to treatment. Judges would likewise be unable to jail someone who stole a car, abused a spouse, drove under the influence (and injured someone), possessed an illegal weapon or committed a host of other crimes -- as long as the perpetrator swore that drugs made him do it. Even dealers profiting from others' addictions would be offered diversion. Addicts would get repeated chances at rehab instead of incarceration, no matter how seriously they tried -- or didn't -- to kick their habit. There are two huge problems with that approach. First, it would jeopardize public safety. Second, it doesn't work. Treatment professionals know that addicts need a "moment of clarity" -- a point at which they hit bottom, or close enough to it that they can soberly acknowledge the state they are in and the need for change. Often, that moment comes after the addict skips rehab or fails a drug test and is facing a weekend behind bars. Not all rehab programs are equal. For hard-core addicts, involuntary programs -- to which they are often sentenced by drug court -- are considerably more effective than voluntary ones. One of the biggest problems with Proposition 5 is that it would repeatedly cycle addicts through ineffective voluntary programs, which impose few consequences for failure. They're only sent to involuntary treatment (under which they go to jail if they fail a drug test or don't show up) as a last resort, after they've committed a series of crimes. This would cripple the most successful programs in the state. This isn't the way forward. Voters should reject Proposition 5 and demand that the state's criminal justice system finally get the serious examination it requires -- in Sacramento, where flaws can be worked out, rather than cemented in a well-meaning but ill-considered ballot measure. - ------------------ NO ON PROPOSITION 6 With the State Scrambling for Funds, Proposition 6 Would Add $1 Billion in Confused Anti-Crime Spending. California just cut, borrowed and wished its way out of a $15.2-billion budget shortfall, but it still must find $8 billion to bring its severely overcrowded prisons up to constitutional standard. The state got into this fix by blindly adopting programs that swallow huge chunks of the budget but add no new money. Voters make it worse by passing tough-on-crime laws that fill up the prisons -- or would, if the prisons weren't already bursting. This is the moment to come to our senses. The folly of automated spending increases is finally apparent. Federal judges are overseeing the prisons. Violent crime is dropping. The state has the opportunity to do a sweeping revamp both of the criminal justice system and the fatally flawed robo-budget. Yet here comes Proposition 6, like a confused beast escaped from some other decade. Simply clueless about where California is in 2008, this supposed anti-gang measure would add new spending mandates -- nearly $1 billion to start -- and would bring the state closer to insolvency with automatic annual increases pegged to inflation. Of course, it would not raise taxes to supply the money, which would have to come from cuts in other programs, most likely the social service investments that help keep California's youth out of gangs in the first place. It would impose new spending mandates on counties but block them from using certain funds for drug or mental-health treatment. It would mandate new jail and prison construction, as if California weren't already being forced by federal courts to ease inmate crowding. It would compel courts to treat more juvenile offenders as adults. In addition to being a budget buster, Proposition 6 is a bureaucracy builder, creating a new state office to distribute public-service announcements about crime. Voters can learn a valuable lesson from a 2006 anti-sex-offender measure that was so flawed it made hundreds of offenders homeless and more likely to re-offend. That initiative also failed to mention who would pay for its mandate to track ex-cons for life by satellite, so that answer has been wedged into Proposition 6, which in turn creates more problems that likely will require more ballot measures -- unless we stop this foolhardy ballot-box policing now. The Times urges a no vote on Proposition 6. - ------------------ NO ON PROPOSITION 9 Prop. 9 Constitutionally Upends the Criminal Justice System by Involving Victims' Families in Prosecutions. The Times recommends a straightforward approach to the measures on this November's ballot that tinker with California's criminal justice system: No, no and no. Add Proposition 9 to the terrible troika that includes propositions 5 and 6 discussed above. It in part duplicates a "victims' bill of rights" measure that Californians adopted at the ballot box 26 years ago, but it would move many of its provisions from the statute books into the state Constitution. In addition, new rights would be recognized for family members of crime victims, most often in parole hearings, where families would be able to appoint someone to speak for them. The frequency of hearings would be reduced. The measure contains some good ways to make life more bearable for the loved ones of crime victims. For example, it requires police officers who respond to crime scenes to give cards to grieving family members that clue them in on what to do -- where to seek help, what happens next in the criminal justice process, what rights they have in court. The problem is that this provision, as well as several less beneficial ones in Proposition 9, would be engraved in the state Constitution, subject to change only by a three-quarters vote of the Legislature or another ballot measure. That makes it extraordinarily difficult to correct errors or update the law. Officers in Orange County already pass out cards to victims' families, and a better approach would be for lawmakers to insist that police across the state do the same. Other provisions may appear similarly humane but actually upend the criminal justice system in a naive attempt to "even the playing field" between defendants and victims' families. The American legal system intentionally and properly distances families from prosecutions; the goal is evenhanded justice. The level of punishment a criminal receives should not depend on how persistent a particular family is in pleading for punishment or blocking parole. Civilized justice rejects vendetta and instead places retribution in the hands of the entire society. It may seem depersonalizing, but that's a goal, not a defect, of our system. If the concern is protection of families from further victimization, as proponents claim, that goal can be met without granting families a new and inappropriate role in prosecutions. The Times urges a no vote on Proposition 9. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake