Pubdate: Thu, 26 Jun 2014
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Bob Egelko

MEASURE TO REDUCE DRUG SENTENCES HEADED TO THE BALLOT

Californians will vote in November on a measure backed by San 
Francisco District Attorney George Gascon - and opposed by most of 
his fellow prosecutors - to make possession of drugs a misdemeanor 
rather than a felony.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office said Thursday that the 
initiative, co-sponsored by Gascon and former San Diego Police Chief 
William Lansdowne, had more than the 504,760 valid signatures it 
needed to qualify for the ballot.

Reducing penalties

It would make possession of heroin, cocaine and several other drugs a 
misdemeanor, punishable by no more than a year in county jail, 
instead of a felony carrying up to three years in prison. It would 
also reduce small-time theft offenses such as shoplifting and check 
forgery to misdemeanors if the amount stolen was $950 or less, about 
twice the current limit.

The reduction wouldn't apply to defendants who had previous 
convictions for murder or sex crimes. Inmates now serving felony 
sentences for crimes that would be reduced to misdemeanors - as many 
as 18,000, according to the sponsors - would be eligible for 
resentencing to lesser terms unless a judge decided they were likely 
to commit violent crimes after their release.

The Legislature's fiscal analyst says the changes could save the 
state hundreds of millions of dollars a year in prison costs. The 
initiative would reserve 65 percent of that money for mental health 
and drug treatment programs, with the rest going to crime-prevention 
programs in schools and trauma recovery for rape victims.

Most people charged with first-offense drug possession in California 
are being sentenced to treatment rather than prison because of 
Proposition 36, which passed in 2000 after a campaign that Gascon co-chaired.

Thirteen states already classify drug possession as a misdemeanor. 
Gascon says San Francisco already sends most of its drug defendants 
to neighborhood courts and treatment programs, and has saved money 
and jail space without increasing crime.

D.A. group's stance

The California District Attorneys Association has fought legislative 
attempts to reduce drug-possession penalties. In 2012, the 
association helped to defeat a bill by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San 
Francisco, to make possession a misdemeanor.

A more modest bill by Leno, allowing prosecutors to decide whether to 
charge the crime as a felony or a misdemeanor, won legislative 
passage last year. But Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, heeding 
prosecutors' arguments that even the possibility of a misdemeanor 
charge with no jail time would eliminate a defendant's incentive to 
plead guilty and enter treatment.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom