A Complete Failure Of Leadership

The State Assembly rejected the only sensible reform that would do anything to deal with the root causes of a prison crisis that has been built by 30 years of progressively draconian sentencing laws. SB110 (Romero) would have created an independent sentencing commission with the ability to rewrite sentencing laws outside of a political culture obsessed with "tough on crime" poses. Everybody with even a modicum of understanding of the prison crisis knows that the overcrowding (at a time when crime is down) is a direct result of mandatory minimums and three strikes and the multitudes of nonviolent offenders serving long sentences in our jails, some as a result of the War on (some kinds of) Drugs.

Now, there is a bill, AB160 by Sally Lieber, voted out of the Assembly earlier this year, that is similar to the bill Sen. Romero authored. But, there are some substantive differences, otherwise how do you understand these quotes:

Romero likened the defeat of her bill to the Legislature's throwing up its hands and telling federal judges to take control of the troubled prison system.

Don Specter, an attorney with the inmate advocate group Prison Law Office, said the vote "certainly emphasizes the one-dimensional approach California has to crime, which is to build more prisons."

You can read the Romero bill and the Lieber bill, still pending in the State Senate (It passed the appropriate committee by a 9-7 vote). The Lieber bill can't touch sentences established through the initiative process (so this is probably about saving three strikes from scrutiny). The Romero bill would have made recommendations to amend those types of sentences. Overall the Romero bill is more comprehensive. This could be some kind of petty jealousy between the chambers.

Hopefully the Senate shows some leadership and passes the Lieber bill, which would at least move things in the right direction. Until then, I'm going to list those Democrats who would rather hang on to their little fiefdoms of "tough on crime" sentencing than enact the only proper reform to deal with a crisis that now will almost certainly be handled by the courts.

Voting No:

Arambula, AD-31 (Fresno)
Fuentes, AD-39 (Sylmar) (WHAT???)
Galgiani, AD-17 (Tracy)
Lieu, AD-53 (Torrance)
Nava, AD-35 (Santa Barbara)
Parra, AD-30 (Hanford)
Salas, AD-79 (Chula Vista)
Torrico, AD-20 (Fremont)

Absent, Abstaining, or Not Voting (occasionally a craven tactic often so they can say that they didn't vote against it):

Charles Calderon, AD-58 (Whittier)
De Leon, AD-45 (Los Angeles)
Karnette, AD-54 (Long Beach)
Levine, AD-40 (Van Nuys) (Maybe he was absent, but EXCUSE ME????)
Wolk, AD-8 (Davis)

These legislators need to answer to their constituents and explain why they want to keep an unsustainable and broken prison system alive. Furthermore, the leadership needs to explain why they failed to whip the proper number of votes to get this reform passed.