Another brilliant California liberal plan: Stop prosecuting crimes under $1000. How's it working?

Five years ago liberals of the Peoples' Republic of California passed a ballot initiative cunningly named the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act."

Cuz who in the world would vote against a proposed law titled the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act," eh?  I mean, everyone want safe neighborhoods and schools, right?

Sure.  So how did the initiative (which would become law if passed) propose to do that?

By doing exactly what liberals always do to make schools and neighborhoods safer:  re-define a bunch of felony crimes down to misdemeanors.  Meaning no jail time for thefts up to $1000 or so, or drug sales or possession, and what Wiki charmlessly calls "property offenses"--include forgery, shoplifting and intentionally writing bad checks.

The measure also required that money saved as a result of the measure would be spent on "school truancy and dropout prevention, victim services, mental health, and drug abuse treatment, and other programs designed to keep offenders out of prison and jail."  Cuz who would vote against a bill that would reduce truancy and dropout rates, or spend more on "treating" drug abuse, eh?  The proponents pushed every hot-button on the planet.

Of course a few crazy conservatives were skeptical:  "If thieves don't get jail time, how are they deterred from committing crimes?"

"Oh, they'll have to pay a fine."

"What if they don't pay, saying they can't cuz they claim to be poor?"

"Don't worry, we make them promise to pay the fine when they can, and then we release 'em."

"Oh...."

"AND, the new law still allows repeat forgers to be charged with a felony IF they have a criminal record.  So hey, nothing's really changed, citizen.  You're all worried for nothing!"

Ah.

So how do you think this worked out?  If you're a liberal you'll never guess.

To the surprise of liberals, police stopped referring thefts and forgeries under $1000, and drug possession--and possession of the date-rape drug Rohypnol--to their DA's for prosecution, cuz it just irritated the DA's, cuz the new law didn't allow them to prosecute.

The next thing that happened--again to the surprise of liberals--was that it took thieves, shoplifters, forgers and druggies about a week to realize that the cops weren't even referring their crimes for prosecution.  (So that bullshit about "We'll make 'em pay a fine" never happened.)  As a result, residents of the Peoples' Republic of California are reporting that theft--both from stores and from homes--has skyrocketed. 

If you know where to look on the Net you can find endless videos of "smash and grab" thefts, where 20 or so thieves run into a store, grab as much as they can carry and run out.  Cool, eh?

Liberals call this a "victimless crime."  Ah.

Thieves are breaking into cars (smashing the glass) in broad daylight, knowing that they have no risk of prosecution.  Liberals counter that this actually makes neighborhoods and schools safer, cuz the new law was named the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act," right?  Much safer now, eh?

Of course the libs refuse to admit that their pet project--launched with so many glowing promises--has resulted in MORE crime, so a professor of "social ecology" at a Cali university has done a study that she claims found that the liberal initiative measure hasn't had a single negative effect!  Seriously.

You may be curious as to how this professor of "social ecology" manage to come to that conclusion.  First she prepares readers to accept her "not a single negative effect" claim by saying that there's no way to evaluate what would have happened if the policy hadn't been implemented.  Okay, that's obvious.  But there has to be more, eh? 

According to her university's press release, she "applied a cutting-edge statistical method, creating a “synthetic California” to serve as the control group for examining crime rates pre- and post-proposition 47."  She claims to have found that the the crime rates of states that didn't pass California's crazy prop 47 were "similar" to California's crime rate.

“When we compared crime levels between these two California’s, they were very similar, indicating that Prop. 47 was not responsible for the increase,” Kubrin said. “What the measure did do was cause less harm and suffering to those charged with crime. Of course we want to keep our streets safe, but we also want to be as humane as possible along the way.  And it’s good to cut criminal justice costs, especially when that money can be earmarked for crime prevention programs, as some of the money saved by Prop. 47 is supposed to be.”

Oh, absolutely, cuz the main goal of laws should be to cause less suffering to criminals. 

And to add insult to injury, some California cities claim theft, car break-ins and drug offenses have dropped slightly in their cities--which liberals are crowing is due to their wonderful Prop47.  The Lying Mainstream media doesn't bother to ask if the claimed result is really bullshit because cities are no longer even reporting the non-prosecutable crimes.