There has been some back-and-forth with police chiefs and GOP members over the last few days regarding their support of Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan for the correctional system. Trying to make some sense of it all, it appears that the idea is to vote on unallocated savings, then figure out the details. The Governor has been quoted as saying that the prison issue had caused “some misunderstandings, and we are ironing them out.” Basically, as the L.A. Times puts it, “[d]espite the delay, the budget deal will still include $1.2 billion in cuts to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, though it will not specify how they are to be made”.
The main point of contention, as we discussed here and here, is inmate release. The solution? Decide on the cuts, postpone discussion on what is to be cut. The inner dealings between Republicans and Democrats regarding this compromise, complete with political back-and-forth and emails titled “Budget Double Cross” (sic), are in the Sac Bee, for your reading pleasure (or agony).
In 2010, we may expect to see on our ballots this proposal, which essentially aims to legalize the possession of up to one ounce of cannabis for adult Californians. The language of the proposal is still in draft format and was last amended today; the people behind the proposal are soliciting responses.
What is interesting, and controversial, is the market and fiscal aspect of the proposal, which gives cities the prerogative to set sales tax, procedures and legalization as they please. In that sense, control over possession and sale would be very localized (and I wonder how that would work for the Feds, especially considering the federal lack of respect for permissive local rules, as per Virginia v. Moore).
State Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth said today that most of his GOP colleagues oppose early release for illegal immigrant inmates or other state prisoners to help reduce the state’s $24.3 billion deficit.
“We don’t want to see early release. We don’t want to see criminal aliens being released to the federal government and then deported and returning back to the streets and communities ofCalifornia – for a very small amount of savings, by the way,” Hollingsworth, the SenateRepublican leader, told The Bee’s Capitol Bureau in an interview. The GOP holds 15 out of 40 seats in the state Senate.
As expected, Governor Schwarzenegger’s call to legalize marijuana did not generate a wall-to-wall consensus. One organization that rejects the idea of legalizing and taxing marijuana is DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which published today a piece in which they argue that marijuana is too harmful to be decriminalized:
“Legalization is not a path we want to pursue,” Dr. Kar added. “This is sending a message that use of marijuana is okay. If marijuana is legalized, people and especially young people, will tend to look at it and think, ‘Well, if it’s legal, it can’t be too harmful.’ It is by no means the benign drug that some would have us think. The most complete, objective and reliable scientific evidence is entirely in the other direction. We would run the risk of having a rise in a sicker and nonproductive population, which would be further detrimental to the state’s economy, if more people were to begin using marijuana.”
These concerns bring up a host of questions, some of which have to do with the medical assessment of harm stemming from marijuana abuse (read more about that debate in Eric Schlosser’s Reefer Madness), and some of which have to do with behavioral economics; namely, whether a change in legal status would lead more people to use marijuana. This last complex question has been the focus of a variety of studies on drug usage deterrence, including the masterful work of Rob MacCoun and Peter Reuter, who also draw parallels from other vices.
The prison guard union, having swelled its well-paid ranks after voter mandates helped to produce a system where 750,000 Californians are either locked up, on parole or on probation, was upset at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for balking at their demands.
And on the disastrous impact of the proposition system on our priorities list, particularly with regard to incarceration and education:
But I do blame the voters. They’re part-time citizens, and not very good at it. They shackled the tax system back in 1978 with Proposition 13, limiting how much government could take from a homeowner. It was a reasonable middle class revolt. But then, in succeeding years, voters passed laws that packed California’s prisons with criminals (many of them petty) but also mandated that the education system get a lion’s share of the budget. On top of that, the voters made it nearly impossible to pass a budget. Then they walked away from their car wreck.
It’s a good reminder that we have ourselves to thank, and to blame, for the situation.
———— Props to my fabulous colleague Dorit Rubinstein-Reiss for alerting me to this.
Following the Appropriations Committee hearing of the Sentencing Commission bill, it has been moved to the Suspense File. I made some phonecalls to find out what that meant. As it turns out, any proposal above a certain amount – not a lot, these days – or any proposal that saves money above a certain amount – is placed in the Suspense File, and all proposals in the file are then dealt with by the CA State Assembly in a quick-firing session. Since budgeting is a major consideration these days, the proposals might we weighted one against the other.
What impact might this information have on the proposal’s chances? As you may recall, the proposal was amended and its text is now very vague on what the role of the commission might be. Sometimes, vague legislation is passed in hopes that later it will be amended by the Senate. There are some encouraging aspects to all this, which suggest that the proposal might not die a slow death in the suspense file:
1) The proposal comes from Karen Bass, the Assembly Speaker. The previous incarnations of sentencing bills came from a variety of lawmakers.
2) The analysis that accompanied the bill created a strong link between sentencing reform and avoidance of overcrowding. While the expenditures and savings that might result from what is currently a very vague bill are unclear, a strong argument in its favor might be that this is a much better, more organized, and more controlled, alternative to the arbitrary release of tens of thousands of prisoners, and is therefore a more palatable response to overcrowding. In that sense, ironically, the bill has perhaps a better chance to pass in times of scarcity than in times of plenty.
…Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened a new front for discussion this week, saying that while it’s not time to legalize pot, he’s willing to talk about it as a revenue-raising measure.
…
Schwarzenegger, who was filmed smoking a joint in the 1977 film, “Pumping Iron,” sparked headlines by responding to a reporter’s question about a Field Poll. The survey found that 56 percent of voters support taxing pot used for pleasure or partying.
“I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues – I’m always for an open debate on it. … But just because of raising revenues, we have to be very careful not to make mistakes at the same time,” Schwarzenegger said.
…
California would be the first to legalize recreational pot use under legislation introduced months ago by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, who has shelved it until next year.
The state Board of Equalization has estimated that legalizing marijuana would reduce its street price by 50 percent, increase consumption, and generate about $1.3 billon annually in taxes.
A key assumption underlying the discourse of correctional policies has been that the ever-increasing sentences, changes in trial structure, and criminalization, represent the will of the public. This is a particularly strong argument in the case of California, since a substantial amount of our correctional reforms occur through voter initiatives. It’s probably time to ask ourselves whether the assumption that Californians are punitive, and desire these reforms, is true.
On its face, the assumption seems to be supported by some anecdotal evidence. In the last elections, Californians passed Proposition 9, which, in addition to strengthening the victim’s position in the criminal process, worsens the inmate’s position in parole hearings (by increasing pre-parole imprisonment periods and diminishing the scope of the right to counsel); while these particular provisions have not been incorporated yet into law, through Judge Karlton’s intervention, they were still elected as “the will of the people”. They also rejected Proposition 5, which promised drug treatment and various diversion options for non-violent drug offenders. Anecdotal evidence also seems to support an assumption of punitiveness; it is enough to glance at the comments at SFGate.com to be confronted with anger about crime, which translates itself into demands for more punitiveness. But is this really true? How does one systematically measure punitiveness? And, more importantly, how do we differentiate between public punitiveness and the initiative of lobbyists, interest groups, and politicians?
The first thing to ask ourselves is whether this is, indeed, a particularly punitive period in our history. While many influential thinkers, such as David Garland, Stanley Cohen, and Jonathan Simon, characterize our times as being increasingly punitive, others disagree. As Roger Matthews reminds us, there also have been examples to the contrary. Think, in the California context, of the recent developments regarding the possibility of decriminalizing marijuana, or on the considerations of incarceration options.
The next step is trying to figure out whether people are particularly punitive, and if so, which factors predict punitiveness. We don’t know much about the punitiveness of Californians in particular, but research conducted elsewhere in the States and in the world suggests that public punitiveness is an empirically complex issue.
Shadd Maruna and Anna King, who conducted a survey on the British public, found that factors such as concerns about the economy and the state of ‘the youth today’ account for a substantial proportion of the effect of actual crime concerns on punitiveness. On the other hand, crime-related factors, such as victimization experiences or anxieties about crime did not appear to predict punitiveness. Similar trends, connecting punitiveness with strong emotions or sentiments, were found by Devon Johnson, who used U.S. national survey data. Her work shows that anger about crime is a significant predictor of punitive attitudes, after controlling for other factors such as racial prejudice, fear of crime, causal attributions for criminal behavior, and political ideology. Similarly, in a national survey study, Sherwood Zimmerman, David van Alstyne and Christopher Dunn found considerably punitive trends; they then compared the hypothetical outcomes to a recent conviction cohort from New York State, and found that, had the public’s will been faithfully applied to actual convictions, the additional correctional costs would have been very high.
Emotion-driven opinions about punishment are, of course, particularly strong regarding issues like the death penalty. Mona Lynch’s study of pro-death penalty discourse on the internet finds that the death penalty is framed as a symbol of justice, a triumph of sorts of the good (the innocent victim) and the evil (the capital murderer). This essentialist perspective eliminates all consideration of costs, let along empathy for the offender.
Some studies, however, have found less punitive outcomes, particularly by tweaking the methodology of punitiveness surveys. Douglas Thomson and Anthony Ragona have critiqued standard punitiveness surveys, arguing that these generally do not ask respondents to consider contingenciessuch as offense circumstances, behavioral content of varioussentences, or fiscal cost differentials. This means that the public will necessarily appear to be more punitive than judges, because they are not faced with the full spectrum of judicial considerations, nor are they offered information about the relativefiscal costs of current and alternative sentencing practices.Thomson and Ragona, who conducted an Illinois survey incorporating issues of costs found that, on several dimensions,the public turned out to be less vengeful than typically portrayed in publicopinion poll and media accounts, notably in its openness to community sentences. I find this information particularly interesting, because it suggests, in the spirit of humonetarianism, that a discourse of scarcity has the potential to decrease public punitiveness. It is useful, in this context, to remember the rejection of Proposition 6, which suggested extremely punitive measures against juveniles and gang members; Prop 6 was mostly attacked for its high financial costs.
Neville Blampied and Elizabeth Kahan, who conducted a survey study in New Zealand, found creativity and openness to alternative punishments among community members asked about responses to juvenile noncompliance. The outcomes here may have been less punitive because of the case study, but they may also reflect cultural differences between the U.S. and New Zealand, which has been very open to juvenile justice reforms, and uses family group conferences almost to the exclusion of juvenile courts. The last important question is whether public punitiveness – if, indeed, it exists – is the reason for punitive policies. As Katherine Beckett argues in her beautiful book Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics, these policies do not originate with the public. She carefully timelines punitive initiatives, demonstrating how public opinion is being swayed by politicians and the media. In states like California, where much public policy is made directly by the public, it is important to examine who stands behind punitive initiatives and how these campaigns are being run.
(image courtesy Stichting Institute for Medical Marijuana in the Netherlands, at medicalmarijuana.org)
The reemergence of the marijuana legalization debate, which we covered earlier this week, has been invigorated by San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s legislative proposal, under which the City’s Department of Public Health would distribute pot through city clinics. The argument, as so many other criminal justice related arguments these days, has shades of humonetarianism:
“We’re spending much more money keeping marijuana underground, trying to hide a fact that is occurring all around us,” Mirkarimi said. “Now is the time to take responsibility for something we’ve deflected to others and to test our ability to take responsibility.”
What is the legal stauts of medical marijuana in California? This informational webpage from the Department of Public Health explains is quite plainly. One can obtain marijuana from a licensed dispensary using a medical marijuana ID card. The card can be obtained at San Francisco General Hospital (incidentally, where UCSF scientists working with HIV patients found them unharmed by medical marijuana use). It costs $103, and requires some medical paperwork, or “an original letter from a medical provider stating that you have a serious medical condition where the use of medical marijuana is appropriate”.
(image courtesy Contra Costa Health Services)
Forging the card is a criminal offense, but some anecdotal evidence I collected this week suggests there’s no incentive to forge; getting medical recommendations is very easy, and several physicians in the Bay Area make their living exclusively from such recommendations. The relationship between the physicians and the dispensaries are much less straightforward. Patients who come to obtain a recommendation are not told the locations of the dispensaries. Not that it is a big secret that requires being “in the know”: the cannabis club directory is online.
However, matters are complicated by the fact that federal authorities do not recognize SB 420, which created the dispensaries. Therefore, despite its legal (albeit quiet) status in California, and oversight by the city, the feds still can (and do) raid dispensaries occasionally. The question is, therefore, whether dispensing the drug through the municipality would discourage the feds from paying attention to the market.
(image courtesy the Sacramento Bee)
