Intriguing review of early impact of California s Prop 47 reducing offense seriousness
Though marijuana reform is the national criminal justice reform story most significantly driven by voter initiatives, voters in California the last two major election cycles have been enacting significant sentencing reforms through the initiative process. In 2012, voters approved Proposition 36 to revise the state s tough Three Strikes Law; last year, voters passed Proposition 47 to reduced various crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. These developments provide yet another reason to view California as the most interesting and dynamic of all states in the history of modern sentencing reform.
The Los Angeles Times now has this lengthy new article detailing some early impacts of Prop 47. The piece is headlined Prop. 47 brings a shift to longer time spent behind bars, and here are excerpts:
were, but i was stunned. what did you do. i got down on my stomach, put my head over and yelled. jody, jody, talk to me. i just yelled down there. but no response. he grabbed a flashlight and flagged down a motorist who came here to the palisade police station. this lieutenant was on duty. until he came through that door, it was a quiet night. the frantic man was telling him a woman had fallen from the lookout above and that her husband was waiting for help. the police called in michaelp an experienced climber. i was there as a rescue mission. i thought she was alive. he began to lower himself off the side of the cliff where the woman s husband said she had fallen. about ten feet down he caught sight of a ledge.
palisades, to their spot. steven remembers pulling up to the scenic lookout sitting in the car with jody, sharing a wine cooler. there were other people sitting in their cars. we walked up, looked over the spot where the binoculars are and walked up to this sort of open view. he says they then turned and took a narrow well-worn path to the rocks. they sat there as the night fell around him. he with his back against the rocks holding her as she sat directly in front of him. at some point something goes terribly wrong. yes. he said he stood up to go back to the car to get water. for whatever reason, jody stood up too. the edge of the rock at her feet. what was your last just standing up and stumbling forward. jody had gone off the cliff. i didn t know how bad things
of lawn chairs, a cooler and she d bring her work from graduate school. they had been escaping to this magical place for years. ever since they were newlyweds in an apartment in new jersey. up here, the air was fresh. and the view seemed limitless. it s sort of framed by the trees that you could look down to the right and see the view of george washington bridge. what they kornt see from here, of course, was the future. had they caught a glimpse of what was to come, surely they would have abandoned this place forever. steven and jody met in georgia. he was in the army. he loved the civil war. she taught history. theirs was a meeting first of minds. then hearts. how would you sort of describe the early years?