Criminal,
Government
Oct. 20, 2023
Stop blaming the smash and grabs on Prop 47
State legislators approved a bill in 2020 shortening the length of probation in most misdemeanor cases. It is this law – not Prop 47 – that is chiefly responsible for transforming misdemeanor charges from highly effective tools for enforcing substance abuse programs and recidivism to little more than a slight bump in the road for offenders.
Eugene M. Hyman
Judge (Ret.)
San Clara County Superior Court
Santa Clara Univ Law School
Eugene is a retired judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court, where for 20 years he presided over cases in the criminal, civil, probate, family and delinquency divisions of the court. He has presided over an adult domestic violence court and in 1999 presided over the first juvenile domestic violence and family violence court in the United States.
Proposition 47 has become an easy scapegoat for the dramatic rise in the state’s smash-and-grab robberies. Ironically, many of the people I’ve seen laying the blame on voters for approving the measure are primarily responsible for the problem - and it’s quite literally their job to fix it.
For starters, it’s outright ludicrous to put fault for these smash-and-grabs on Prop 47 (which raised the threshold for petty theft in California from $...
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