I was born and raised in southern California, coming of age in the early 70s. For all the laid-back, Hollywood glam, surfer, Fast Times at Ridgemont High vibe that surrounded the area, attracting both tourists and new residents, there was always the accompanying dark side of high crime and high profile crimes – Watts Riots, Manson Family, SLA, Night Stalker, Hillside Strangler, Juan Corona, William Bonin “Freeway Killer”, et al. This was the California that provided the material for crime novels; from Raymond Chandler to Michael Connelly. It also lead, at the end of the 70’s and then through the 80s a concerted effort to combat crime by holding perps responsible (determinate sentencing and 3-strikes) and allowing victims to actually have a voice at sentencing and parole hearings. The success of these measures helped lead to a significant drop in crime.

But no more.

When Jerry Moonbeam Brown (who was governor in the 1970s) was re-elected to office in 2011, he immediately set out to reduce the state prison population with the sham of “Prison Realignment Program”. This ‘send-state-prisoners-to-county-jails’ resulted in the release of 10K prisoners, many of whom never reported to the counties for supervision and others who just restarted their criminal behavior. The strain on counties – whose jails were designed low-risk offenders such as DUI, shoplifting or drug possession for 30-180 day sentences, has been substantial. Not equipped for the influx of the kind of hardened, career criminal typical of state prisoners, not only were the misdemeanor offenders kicked out sooner to make room, but many times even the bad dudes slipped out with tragic results.

Prop 47 was another ‘feel good’ measure put to voters as a way to give people who make mistakes a second chance. It reduced a whole range of felonies (known as wobblers because the crime could be charged as either be a felony or misdemeanor) into permanent misdemeanors. Most of these were drug and property crimes. The results of the passage of this measure was, frankly, predictable — a huge increase in crime.

But the best is yet to come!!