{"id":9910,"date":"2011-06-01T13:50:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T17:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=9910"},"modified":"2011-06-01T13:50:59","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T17:50:59","slug":"californias-criminal-lack-of-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/9910\/californias-criminal-lack-of-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"California&#8217;s Criminal Lack of Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I wrote about <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/61-state-issues\/1007-unfunded-mandates-play-politics-with-californias-prisons-\" target=\"_blank\">California\u2019s prison dilemma<\/a>: mandatory sentencing laws combined with too few prisons. \u00a0So far, the choice has been presented as between less time for criminals or more taxes for the law-abiding. \u00a0An update by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.recordnet.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20110601\/A_OPINION0619\/106010319\/-1\/NEWSMAP\" target=\"_blank\">Debra Saunders<\/a> doesn\u2019t paint a prettier picture:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even law-and-order types understand that the system must be streamlined. Nina Salarno Ashford of Crime Victims United told me, &#8220;I understand budget constraints.&#8221; For example, parole violators should go to jail &#8211; not prison. But Salarno looks at overcrowded jails, which already have had to release inmates, and fears the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>How do you pay for it?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is probably going to take taxes,&#8221; she answered.<\/p>\n<p>No lie. There is not much point in keeping taxes low &#8211; only to have some lowlife boost your wallet.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, there&#8217;s not much point in paying higher taxes if the state slashes the number of inmates by 40,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now that the United States Supreme Court has demanded <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2011\/may\/24\/local\/la-me-court-prisons-20110524\" target=\"_blank\">California reduce its overcrowded prison population<\/a> by over 40,000, there may not be enough time to raise taxes and build adequate prison space even if Californians wanted to.<\/p>\n<p>If ever there was a need for statesmanship from California\u2019s executive and legislative leaders, this is it. \u00a0Otherwise, when tens of thousands of felons are freed, there will literally be rioting in the streets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I wrote about California\u2019s prison dilemma: mandatory sentencing laws combined with too few prisons. \u00a0So far, the choice has been presented as between less time for criminals or more taxes for the law-abiding. \u00a0An update by the Debra Saunders doesn\u2019t paint a prettier picture: Even law-and-order types understand that the system must be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,299,1319,2605,2742,1753,71,2741],"class_list":["post-9910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-california","tag-leadership","tag-prison","tag-prisoner","tag-statesmanship","tag-taxes","tag-united-states-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9910"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9914,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910\/revisions\/9914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}