Lawmaker Blasts 'Pro-Criminal' Colleagues
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer wrote a column recently calling members of the Public Safety Committee "pro-criminal." Not surprisingly, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez thought this went too far. He printed out the column, confronted Spitzer about it and started yelling obscenities. And he bounced Spitzer (in lower photo) from the Public Safety Committee. The FlashReport, which helped start the whole mess by printing Spitzer's column, isn't holding back today:
"The real tragedy here is that Assembly Democrats will continue to treat their criminal constituents with the same level of love and respect that they afford to all of their other constituents (well, perhaps they do prioritize their convicted constituents over one group -- taxpayers) -- and you can be sure that the most effective, anti-crime ideas that are introduced as bills this year will languish in that committee, which once again has been stacked with a majority of Nunez's cronies."
But haven't tough-on-crime Republicans and Democrats completely failed in one critical arena? A new report by the watchdog Little Hoover Commission calls the California criminal justice system a catastrophe, with prisons swelled beyond capacity, inmates living in hallways and gyms, and critically: "The bulk of the state's prisoners are not succeeding once released. California’s recidivism rate, at 70%, is near the highest in the nation."
Who is to blame? The report says 30 years of "tough on crime" politics and "political posturing," which has "taken a good idea –- determinate sentencing –- and warped it beyond recognition with a series of laws passed with no thought to their cumulative impact. And these laws stripped away incentives for offenders to change or improve themselves while incarcerated. ... Consequently, offenders are released into California communities with the criminal tendencies and addictions that first led to their incarceration. They are ill-prepared to do more than commit new crimes and create new victims."
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