It is no secret that the United States prison population surpasses that of any other nation, that the country has very harsh sentencing laws for minor offenses, and that, as many argue, the inherent racial bias in the system is powerful and detrimental to society.
It’s an issue that, as Inimai Chettiar and Abigail Finkelman of the Brennan Center for Justice put at The Daily Beast, “seems ripe for genuine bipartisan cooperation.” However, they say, the debate was absent from the 2014 campaign trail — perhaps because it was less controversial, or because candidates feared being seen as soft on crime. “This silence creates the risk that a moment of promise will become a missed opportunity for change.”
But even though candidates avoided any national discussion of the pressing issue, some ballot initiatives could yet influence the criminal justice system.
Voters in California decided to pass Proposition 47, a measure aiming to reclassify as misdemeanors rather than felonies the personal possession of a number of illegal drugs, and the theft of property valued at $950 or less. The measure will also result in resentencing thousands of inmates.
“We hope we’re setting a precedent for the nation,” Lynne Lyman, the state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told The Los Angeles Times.
Although it was overshadowed by other propositions on the state’s ballot, the measure has divided some of the nation’s highest lawmakers, and along unusual lines.
The proposition was supported by a five major foundations, The Los Angeles Times reports, including Vote Safe, bankrolled by the billionaire and backer of progressive causes George Soros. Brad Pitt, Jay-Z and Cameron Diaz are part of Artists for 47, a group of Hollywood actors and rock stars standing behind the proposition.
The actress Olivia Wilde writes for the Huffington Post that she supports the measure as a mother, sympathetic to the women who “face steeper obstacles than men in rebuilding their lives” after leaving prison. Some of the funds saved on reducing the number of prisoners would go toward K-12 education.
Conversely, from $50 million to $100 million of the savings would be funneled each year into mental health care and drug treatment. Democratic State Senator Darrell Steinberg wrote (along with Rusty Selix) an op-ed for The Sacramento Bee focusing on the proposition’s impact on the ill and addicted. Mr. Steinberg decries California’s approach to mental health programs, including massive cuts: “By failing to invest in local treatment and recovery options, it is, sadly, no surprise that people with mental health needs have ended up in our jails, courts and prisons.”
Joining Mr. Steinberg, Ms. Wilde and Mr. Pitt were allies from a wholly different world.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, a vocal proponent of criminal justice reform, writes for The Orange County Register with B. Wayne Hughes Jr., a conservative California billionaire, that they were surprised at the number of people asking them why, as Republicans, were they working to change our criminal justice system. “Why wouldn’t we?” Mr. Rand and Mr. Hughes say that the system must be changed, because it “drains tax dollars, destabilizes families and, worse, isn’t making us any safer.”
Using similar language of the fiscally conservative, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, also came out supporting the measure (and also writing with Mr. Hughes).
“Reducing wasteful corrections spending and practices is long overdue in California,” Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Hughes write, pointing out that while the crime rates are similar, the number of inmates is five times larger than it was 50 years ago. “And as Californians know, the state’s prison system ballooned over the last few decades and became so crowded that federal judges have mandated significant reductions.”
Coming out against the proposition were representatives of California’s law enforcement and voices from both sides of the aisle.
Writing for Fox News, William Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, calls the early release initiative a “roll of dice meets ticking time bomb.”
Referring to the existing measures that enable the early release of those convicted of child endangerment or short sentences for spousal abuse, Mr. Whalen writes: “Such could be California’s future: revolving-door justice that fails at protecting the endangered.”
California’s Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein agreed in an op-ed for The Los Angeles Daily News that the proposition would not make the state any safer. She points out that stealing a firearm worth less than $950 would be, for instance, classified as a misdemeanor. She writes that the measure would “ultimately lead to the release of thousands of dangerous criminals, and a wholesale reclassification of many dangerous felonies as misdemeanors would put the people of California at continued risk going forward.”
The California Police Chiefs Association started a campaign against the initiative.
In the end, after shattering some ideological divides, Proposition 47 passed, proving the bipartisan nature of calls for reforming the criminal justice system.
It was not the only proposition to pass that ostensibly veers away from the “tough on crime” stance. Nicole Flatow at Think Progress writes that by supporting these ballots, “voters sent a signal” that they were ready to reform the system.
As part of a larger bipartisan push, voters in New Jersey supported a bail reform that would ensure that who was kept behind bars depended on the severity of their crime, and not their income.
Washington, D.C., Oregon and Alaska voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, which could lead to fewer people in the country’s overcrowded prisons. Ms. Flatow points out that the messages of support for these measures were entirely different — in libertarian Alaska, the message focused on the relative safety of marijuana abuse, while in Washington, the vote depended on “a significant population of very liberal gentrifiers mixed with longtime African-American residents who are sick and tired of criminal justice policies that arrest African-Americans for pot at eight times the rate of whites.”
It seems that despite political apathy and partisan polarization, it is possible for Americans to agree on a big issue — even if for different reasons.