The explosion in California’s prison population can be traced to first-term Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature on the Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act of 1976, a bill that was supposed to remove racism and irrationality from prison terms but in the end did the opposite. Fourth-term Gov. Brown, who left office last year, understood the problem well. He presided over a prison system that has been under federal court order since 2011 to reduce unconscionable crowding — the result of gratuitous “enhancements” piled on by lawmakers and voters over 40 years. He tried to fix the problem but achieved only partial success.
It’s now time for California to finish the job.
There are two ways forward, and they are not mutually exclusive. The state can overhaul its criminal sentencing laws and, in fact, began a well-considered process early this year to do just that. Recommendations from the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code are to be submitted in January.
In the meantime, prosecutors can and should use their considerable discretion to inject rationality and fairness into their charging decisions, as new Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón did his first week in office when he instructed prosecutors not to charge enhancements. More on Gascón’s and the committee’s processes in a moment. But first, some definitions.
“Determinate” and “indeterminate” are technical words best known to tomato growers, and “enhancements” is a term more suited to a plastic surgeon’s office, but these terms also describe features of criminal sentencing and are essential to understanding the mess in our system of incarceration.
Until nearly half a century ago, California sentenced convicted felons to indeterminate prison terms — 25 years to life, for example, or five to 20. When you got out depended in large part on how you behaved in prison and whether and when you were deemed “rehabilitated,” having learned your lesson and prepared yourself for a responsible life in society without further endangering public safety. But Black inmates often found that on sentences of five to 20, the warden or the parole board considered them rehabilitated after 20 years, while their white counterparts were getting out after five. Besides race, discrepancies reflected a host of other prejudices and injustices.
Determinate sentencing — a flat, easy-to-understand term of 10 years, for example — took out much of the randomness but left little flexibility to account for extenuating circumstances, so California settled on a range of possible years for each crime. For example, robbery results in a sentence of three, six or nine years, depending on the facts of the crime and the record of the defendant. If you used a gun, you could expect to get the high end of the range.
But then came the enhancements. Instead of getting the high end of the range for robbery, you’d be sentenced to an additional 10 years if you used a gun, whether or not it was loaded. Add 20 if you fired it, and life imprisonment if you caused injury with it. Of course we want to punish gun violence, but there was no need to add enhancements to a robbery charge to do that; the defendant could simply be charged with assault with a deadly weapon or a host of other base crimes that better matched the defendant’s deeds.
Read the full editorial opinion
Couldn’t help but notice the editorial didn’t mention sex offenses or the registry in its complaining of California’s ludicrous sentencing scheme.
Pray for me. I’m going to LA with a 24/25 year old expunged misdemeanor sexual battery with summary probation. I’m hoping the new DA will support my request for a COR!
There are just too many evil violent people out there that NEED to be kept in prison for as long as they can be and the enhancements do this.
Off the top of my head I can think of two: the individual the ambushed and murdered Sheriff’s sergeant Owen over 4 years ago and the individual that ambushed and shot the deputies in Compton last year.
It’s bad enough that California is so slack in executing (no pun intended) the death penalty for number of EXTREMELY heinous individuals on its death row, no need to compound that by letting out other extremely dangerous individuals early.
Now, you may say “Well people say that about sex offenders”. That is true, they do. And I would say the SAME should indeed go for them…DEPENDING on the nature of their crime.
In Britain recently there was an article about some gang that was arrested that made it a habit of going around raping babies. An extreme example, to be sure, but yes, those people should never see the light of day again outside prison walls.
I think it’s importany to remember that just because somebody else is a RSO that does not mean that we are all brothers walking hand-in-hand down the same path.