Bring Courage Back Into Fashion

The collection of “tough on crime” proposals that was assembled into Proposition 21 on the March 2000 ballot may not be the most draconian crime legislation in recent California history, but it is certainly the most peculiar.

From “three strikes” in 1994 to “10-20-life” in 1996 to victims’ rights in the 1980s, every other recent crime proposal to take center stage in California was based on a single problem and a specific strategy for addressing it. Three strikes was crimes committed by recidivists with prior serious convictions. Victims’ rights was about plea-bargaining compromises. The mandatory prison terms provided in “10-20-life” were aimed at three categories of firearms crimes. In each case, the focus of the reform was a specific strategy to address a central problem.

By contrast, Proposition 21 is all over the criminal justice map. Its 45 pages of legalese package together seven different pieces of legislation. The list of “serious” and “violent” crimes that trigger special penalties is expanded in one section of the initiative, while registration and penalty provisions for gang crimes are put forward in another section.

The bulk of the provisions in Proposition 21 deal with offenders under 18, but in no coordinated fashion. One section of the proposition shifts the authority to decide whether juveniles should be transferred to criminal court from judges to prosecutors. A second section removes probation department discretion, so that juveniles facing a long list of charges must be detained. Yet another provision eliminates the possibility of sealing juvenile records for many crimes, even if the offender’s adult life is crime-free.

Some of these proposals are aimed at juvenile theft offenders (informal probation) while others concern the death penalty (gang shooting). It is far from clear what the various provisions have to do with one another, let alone how they relate to any overall strategy. The recurring themes are punishment and enhancing prosecutorial power.

When a huge assortment of discrete legal changes is packed into a single proposal, any rational analysis of each is impossible. What does the prohibition on sealing juvenile records have to do with gang shootings? What evidence is there that allowing a juvenile burglary to be forgotten is a bad idea if an adult has lived crime-free?

When so much is pushed into a single initiative, the ordinary citizen must take a great deal on trust. There is little evidence in the ballot materials now being circulated that the proponents of Proposition 21 are worthy of much trust.

One example of the proponents’ “don’t bother us with facts” approach concerns youth crime rates. They argue that youth crime will go up because the youth population is going up. But recently released statistics suggest the opposite of a youth crime wave from 1991 to 1998 and provide no basis for a crime panic. Homicide arrests are the most reliable index of serious violence of all kinds: If homicide arrests decline, that means gun robberies and drive-by shootings are down as well. Between 1991 and 1998, adult homicide arrests dropped by 38%, and this was seen as a major victory for crime control in California.

Yet from 1991 to 1998, the per capita rate of homicide arrests of those under 18 dropped more than 60%. No age group can match the sharp drop in lethal violence by juveniles. This huge drop while the youth population was increasing already has shown that predictions of a coming youth crime wave are baloney.

So next March hardly seems like the right time to sell the voters on the need for a wholesale dismembering of California juvenile justice. Who is the political operator trying to create a youth crime scare, and why is this hodgepodge proposition expected to pass when all the news on juvenile crime is good?

Proposition 21 has as its primary sponsor the political ghost of former Gov. Pete Wilson. Funds from the 1996 Wilson presidential campaign greased Proposition 21 through the expensive process of qualifying for the initiative ballot. And the reason many political observers believe Proposition 21 will pass has nothing to do with its merits. No hard-line crime measure has ever been turned down by the voters once it qualified for a general election.

Why? Many citizens regard such measures as symbolic acts requiring only that we choose sides between victims and offenders, and never mind about the specifics. And few public officials are willing to risk opposing it. No experts on juvenile justice favor Proposition 21, and almost nobody in political life thinks it is necessary. But standing up to populist politics has long been out of fashion among elected officials in California.

This would be a good time to bring courage back into fashion. Proposition 21 is not about Polly Klaas or Megan Kanka or any other crime victim; it is Pete Wilson’s law. We soon will see whether such details count for much.