By Just A Guy
Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His reports run twice a week.
“We should not play politics with public safety.” That’s what Assembly member Fiona Ma states as part of her argument against the bill that proposed early releases as part of how California will make up for slashing $1.2 billion from the vast coffers of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Those coffers, incidentally, have more in them than do the coffers for higher education. Oddly, Ma is a Democrat out of San Francisco.
We live in a state that prides itself for its innovation, its technology and its forward thinking. These characteristics have made California great. But I don’t think that innovators and forward thinkers seem to be running the Assembly or Senate.
We are supposed to be progressive, so we decriminalize pot for medical use — but ban gay marriage and pass laws like three strikes?
Forward thinkers, these politicians, so forward that even their hindsight is not 20-20 — because three strikes is what got California into this big prison mess in the first place.
Don’t you remember all those stories about people getting life sentences for stealing bicycles and pizza?
What they really used three strikes (consciously or not) for is to create an industry out of crime and prisons, an industry in which thousands of families now are able to live the American dream and make their very adequate living – and the politicians can create long political lives for themselves by destroying many thousands of other dreams, at the public’s expense.
If public safety were really the number one priority of politicians and those who proclaim it, they would take off their broken glasses and go get a second opinion as to what the results of their pitiful budget and myopic laws are really resulting in: Less public safety in the future.
Amazing that we can see the results of harming the earth through abuse, that we know that if you smoke you’ll probably die, if you beat your kids they will probably beat their kids, etc …. Yet we can’t seem to see that if you spend more on prisons than on higher education, if you take away further money from K-12, from welfare and from health care, that you will be creating more of that, long term, which you say the public needs protection from.
If they were really concerned about your longterm safety, and not their political careers, they would vote for the lesser of two evils — which is to let those people out now that are costing $50,000 a year, and apply those funds to the future of public safety. (I bet if you release 27,000 people and give them each $50,000 a year, not too many will come back!)
Ahh — but what about the redundancies that would be created and the officers that would be laid off because they had to close seven or more prisons? You see the cycle folks, do you? It’s obvious, it’s plain, you can buy it two for one, 24/7/365 at Lenscrafters.
I wonder if Fiona Ma and the others voting against releases up for reelection next year are running on a tough on crime platform.
We should be tough on some crime, but often toughness is predicated on money (Dante Stallworth) and not on the crime.
We are hypocrites, us Californians. We every day we spend more on prisons than college, or have another person do any other day for a victimless crime.
Lastly …. more hypocrisy: Phillip Garrido may not be charged for some of the crimes he committed because the statute of limitations has passed and those crimes will never be prosecuted. But many in prison are doing life, or getting their sentences doubled or tripled, for crimes that happened 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. Why isn’t there a statute of limitations from your past?
Did you ever forgive the high school bully that picked on you because you had four eyes — or are you going to hold that against him forever?
Move on, California. They have corrective surgery now — and maybe that bully is your ophthalmologist.