Monthly Archive: January 2022
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 3, 2022 3:19 pm
The California Supreme Court today rejected an interpretation of California’s Proposition 57 that would have allowed convicted felons with a determinate sentence for a mix of violent and non-violent felony convictions to seek parole, when those with only a single violent crime conviction could not. That such a bizarre result is even a plausible reading goes only to show how poorly written and poorly conceived this initiative was.
The opinion in In re Mohammad, S259999 is here. Don Thompson has this story for Associated Press. CJLF’s brief by Kym Stapleton is here. Our press release is here.
UPDATE (by CJLF staff): CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger appeared on LA’s KFI John & Ken Show discussing the Court’s decision. Here’s the link to listen to Hour 2. Kent comes on about 4 minutes into the broadcast.
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by Michael Rushford · Jan 3, 2022 1:29 pm
In a thoughtful OpEd in the Wall Street Journal, John Jay College Professor Barry Latzer discusses some of the factors that are influencing the increase in crime across America. Latzer notes that the last major crime wave which began in the late 1960s “was driven largely by three factors: large-scale rural-to-urban migration of African-Americans and immigration to big cities of Hispanic populations with high violent-crime rates, massive growth in the youth population, and a weak criminal-justice system. One might throw in a fourth: The crack-cocaine epidemic, which sent crime soaring after it began to ease in the early ’80s. These elements aren’t present today, though attempts to weaken the criminal-justice system are worrisome.” This time around he cites “the pandemic, along with dubious criminal-justice system reforms, undoubtedly made things worse. Covid made police reluctant to interact with suspects except when making arrests for serious crimes. Wholesale releases from jails like New York’s Rikers Island put offenders back on the streets. Some states adopted bail reforms that kept offenders from jail entirely. It didn’t help that a new crop of progressive prosecutors, in misguided efforts to reduce so-called mass incarceration, declined to prosecute numerous misdemeanors and agreed to light sentences even for some violent felons.
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