Beginning in 2011, shortly after Jerry Brown began his third term as Governor, a series of bills he signed into law, and several ballot measures financed by progressive criminal justice reform advocates have changed California’s criminal justice system. Since the late 1980s, state laws and policies, many adopted by the voters as ballot measures, reduced violent and property crime crime rates in California by 50% and homicide by more than two-thirds, by increasing sentences for repeat offenders and cracking down on quality of life crimes like drug use, vagrancy, vandalism and theft. All of this has changed over the past nine years. Today, selling and using drugs, stealing property valued under $950, sleeping and going to the bathroom on city sidewalks and parks are no longer punishable offenses. Repeatedly stealing cars, burglarizing businesses and beating your wife, girlfriend or children are no longer crimes that come with a prison sentence and some 30,000 criminals who were serving time for these crimes have been released back onto the streets, along with rapists and murderers that new laws have made eligible for early release.
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