There will be a lot of wailing about this, but nobody can claim it was a sudden development or nobody could see it coming. California has protested, delayed and in some cases simply ignored previous federal rulings, even when the judges have tried to make allowances for the states permanent basket case of a budget.
Perhaps the most damning example of this is the following fact:
Governor Schwarzenegger recently proposed reducing California’s budget gap by $1.2 billion through a combination of changes to corrections, including parole reform and early releases. But law-enforcement organizations and victims rights groups attacked the plan, and while the corrections cuts are still part of the state’s official budget, the reforms are not.
So while the government will cut the budget, any moves to reduce the population died by the same special interest knives that have so handicapped every other aspect of California governance. One cannot blame the judges for being, at this point, beyond suspicious about California's good faith in this affair.
The problem as we both know is that the prison guard union has fought any prisoner release for years because the more people they can keep behind bars, the more they can increase the number of prison guards and the more guards, the more dues to the union.
ReplyDeleteAny bets they'll try releasing violent offenders and leave the non-violent ones behind bars? That way, when something goes wrong, they can say "we told you so" and push for even more guards.
That's unfortunately how this stuff works.