Prop 57
Last November, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition (Prop) 57 by a margin of 31 percent. The object of Prop 57—The Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016—is to move up parole consideration of nonviolent offenders who have served the full term of the sentence for their primary offense and who demonstrate that their release would not pose an unreasonable risk of violence to the community.… Read the rest
I ran across an article in the June 22, 2017, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Entitled “Sheriff Reduces Jail Time for Georgia Inmates Who Saved Officer,” the content of the piece written by Ellen Eldridge rattled around in my head. My first impression was positive. Of course, there are good Samaritans in jails and prisons.… Read the rest
I offer you Exhibit A, which proves that voters have the power to bring about positive prison reform. Exhibit A is the result of the vote on Proposition 57, which California voters approved on November 8th with 63 percent of the vote. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the impetus of Governor Jerry Brown’s putting Prop 57 on the ballot was “to further shrink the state’s prison population.”… Read the rest
The fate of California’s death penalty is up for a vote. Two competing yes/no propositions are on the November 8th ballot. Should the state end the practice of killing condemned convicts, and should the botched ways of ending these lives finally be stopped?
Background
Since 1976, as reported by CNN, 87 percent of the 1,391 executions over the last forty years in the United States have been by lethal injection, and 11 percent have been by electrocution.… Read the rest