By Just A Guy
Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. You can read his last piece, and links to previous ones, here. He will try to respond to all commments, but since communicating from prison is tricky, it may take a while.
How is it that California is going to try and address the prison overcrowding issue and budget shortfall by making crimes that were felonies misdemeanors? Isn’t this rather like borrowing from Pete to pay Paul?
An article in the Wall Street Journal goes over this idea.
Just because the state isn’t, technically, paying for the inmates housed in county jails doesn’t mean that the people of the state aren’t paying for it. I certainly see that a long-term solution is to reduce crimes and lower the prison population through more progressive sentencing laws, and de-criminalizing some things, AND providing rehabilitation. But I just don’t get how this plan is going to help with the current problem of California’s budget deficit or the huge overcrowding problem.
The bottom line, according to representatives from counties across the state, is that our local jails are already at, or near capacity, and that all that is going to happen is a large portion of the prison population (20,000) will shift to county jails. This will, ultimately, cause an increase in crime.