From the Department Of Stating The Obvious:
The mayor of La Puente said Thursday that a federal mandate to cut the inmate population in California prisons is to blame for a sharp jump in crimes in the city.
. . .
According to Mayor John Solis, sexual assaults are up about 300 percent and assaults with guns and knives up nearly 150 percent citywide since the realignment plan took effect a few months ago.
Under the realignment plan, many non-violent offenders end up in the county system instead of state prison and then get released early because of overcrowding.
Solis believes that makes the perpetrators even bolder.
“I think more crimes are being committed because, ‘Go in for a year, I’ll be out in a week, I’ll take my chances, it’s worth it’,” he said.
There's more at the link.
Yep. If you waste money on paying your prison guards six-figure salaries, sooner or later you're going to have to cut your prison budget somewhere. Since your prison guards have a union that protects their interests, and you can't afford to close already overcrowded facilities, that means the only alternative is to release prisoners early. You, the taxpayer, have to pay those inflated salaries for the prison guards: and because you keep electing politicians who'll pay those salaries rather than fight the union, you're now going to have to deal with the consequences - namely, finding yourself at greater risk of violent crime.
Will California ever learn? Is it, in fact, still possible for California to learn - or is it a lost cause?
*Sigh*
Peter
6 comments:
To answer your question: Nope. Kiss California goodbye.
May the Andreas fault 10.0 quake send California out to Obama's favorite vacation spot.........Aloha criminals!
I hate to say this, but it's not just California.
They recently early-released a bunch of criminals here in KY, most of whom were in for violent offenses. Again, budget cuts were the stated reason.
I don't know what a prison guard around here makes, but I have to say that they would have to pay me a *lot* more than I am making now in order for me to do that job.
Sorry, unless there's a typo in the article, I'm not buying the excuse. At least not without more information. The article states that the plan "realigns" non-violent offenders. Now I admit that sexual assaults and assaults with deadly weapons might be classified as non-violent in california, and that some "non-violent" offenders (drug traffickers who got picked up) might be likely to commit violent crimes but it seems to me that something else might be at work here.
I am opposed to long incarceration. In its place, I would prefer to see more corporal punishment (i.e. Singaporean caning), limb amputation (hey, it's Sharia compliant, so celebrate diversity), and capital punishment (preferably delivered by the would-be victim, during the attempted commission of the crime).
You could blame it on the unions who hammer out these contracts, and whose dues are used to re-elect the entire CA dem political machine. But do you know where my neighbor makes his prison guard money? Fighting the slew of forest fires each year! Yes. He is in charge of prisoners who are used to help CalFire each year, sent wherever needed. He'll be gone for weeks at a time, getting time and a half. And, if not that, these guards work double shifts, at time and a half.
Lucky me, I live east of the SA Fault, and have no desire ever to be near Hawaii. Thank you.
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