Pubdate: Sun, 16 Nov 2014
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Chico Enterprise-Record
Contact:  http://www.chicoer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861
Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Jim Anderson

VOTERS TAKE STEP TO HELP FIX BROKEN SYSTEM

After a large majority of voters approved Proposition 47, reducing 
many petty theft and drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, 
this newspaper posted an editorial characterizing the outcome as a 
mistake and a threat to public safety. The editorial asks: "What were 
the voters thinking?" and then suggests the voters were gullible and 
easily deceived. In my view, the voters got it right.

Our country and state has in recent decades followed the vain hope 
that public safety could be achieved by building and filling up a 
vast array of prisons. Large numbers of nonviolent offenders now 
occupy and overcrowd, at substantial expense, our prison system. 
Michelle Alexander's recent book "The New Jim Crow" convincingly 
argues that we have created a new underclass, mostly of minority men 
and women, who for minor offenses are incarcerated and return to 
society as felons, suffering discrimination for the rest of their 
lives reminiscent of the old Jim Crow system.

Our country's rate of imprisonment is higher than any other country 
in the world, beyond Russia, China, and Iran, and eight times as high 
as Germany. This is a costly system on many levels, created not 
because we are by nature a more criminal people, but because we 
mistakenly believe imprisonment is a solution to petty crime. This 
mistaken assumption is the one that voters have rejected. The 
transition to a more effective and humane solution will not be easy, 
but the approval of Proposition 47 starts us on the right road.

- - Jim Anderson, Chico
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom