Newsletter: Prop 36 would cost more, deliver less and does not cover major crimes

Good morning. It is Wednesday, Sept. 25. Here’s what’s happening in Opinion.

The search for a no-cost cure to crime and homelessness underlies Proposition 36, a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot based on the long-debunked notion that we can scare people out of addiction and, somehow, into housing, jobs and success by turning their repeat misdemeanors into felonies that carry multi-year prison sentences.

The irony is that voters created successful anti-recidivism programs 10 years ago, without borrowing or raising taxes, and they are working well. Proposition 36 will gut them. That’s one reason The Times’ editorial board weighed in strongly against the measure on Sunday.

Voters in 2014 approved Proposition 47 to erase felony charges for drug possession and petty theft. The savings in prison costs — now $800 million and counting — funds rehabilitation programs.

That’s $800 million for job training, drug treatment, life skills, behavioral therapy and other services that put people with misdemeanor records on paths toward successful futures. Independent research institutes, such as Rand, report that the programs are working. Also funded is trauma recovery for victims of more serious crimes. Survivors are referred to psychiatric care, peer support and economic assistance.

The Proposition 36 allocation for similar programs, or indeed anything: $0. Instead of adding resources, Proposition 36 subtracts. Because it would partially refill prisons, it would deplete the savings that currently pay for effective programs. Yet it will require us to find new money to pay drug treatment contractors that are not subjected to the same state-approved independent evaluation processes.

The measure is popular in part because of the mistaken belief that it would allow police to crack down on smash-and-grab robberies and residential burglaries. But those crimes are already felonies and are appropriately subject to multi-year sentences. Proposition 36 would send drug addicts to prison, but it does not cover violent crimes or major property crimes at all.

So to review: Proposition 36 would cost more and deliver less, and would not affect violence or major theft. But at least we could say we got tough on petty crime.

Coffee prices are rising. Wake up and smell the climate change. Columnist LZ Granderson looks at how global warming is hurting the farmers and the developing regions of the world that grow coffee. “If this economic ecosystem collapses in Central America in large part because of man-made climate change, the ripple effect will far exceed the price of coffee at a restaurant.”

Southern California forests are burning. Protect them from their biggest threat — people. Humans present the clearest and most present fire danger to wildlands, Letters Editor Paul Thornton writes. “Managing access to forests needs to reflect the reality of climate change. That includes telling people to stay out for a week or two when the foliage is bone-dry and another hellish heat wave appears in the weather forecast.”

Executions of the conceivably innocent are no better than human sacrifice. Last week South Carolina executed a man despite evidence that he may have been innocent. “When we kill the conceivably innocent, we become a mockery of ourselves and our supposed allegiance to justice,” The Times’ editorial board writes.

How can Usha Vance stand by her husband as he fans bigotry? Dipti S. Barot, a primary care doctor and educator, shares a similar upbringing as the wife of the Republican vice presidential candidate, both raised in Southern California, the daughters of Indian parents who immigrated in the 1970s. She writes: “I don’t know what Usha Vance might say to her husband in private, but publicly, she has been silent on his bigotry, which in my opinion makes her complicit. I’m completely confounded by it.”

Miss Sassy, cat of Springfield, Ohio, fame, finally speaks up — ‘No, Haitians did not eat me’. Editorial Writer Carla Hall channeled the cat at the center of the false pet-eating rumors that were amplified by Donald Trump and JD Vance. “My sojourn in the basement — when Anna couldn’t find me — had been reported to the police and cast as a kidnapping by our Haitian neighbors. Whaatt? So embarrassed.”

More from opinion

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: Los Angeles school kids, get off your damn phones! Trust me, you’ll thank us later
• Jonah Goldberg: Why the next president — whether it’s Donald Trump or Kamala Harris — won’t have a mandate
• LZ Granderson: Finally, a reckoning on how we teach American history

From guest contributors

• Israel’s growing war with Hezbollah is traumatizing Lebanon. There’s only one path to peace
• With the Disney Channel’s slow demise, where will Gen Alpha find their ‘Hannah Montana’?
• Why I wish my novels were banned

From the Editorial Board

• Jessica Caloza for Assembly District 52
• George Whitesides for the 27th Congressional District

Letters to the Editor

• Trump is actually a threat to democracy. It’s OK to speak the truth
• I helped expose a puppy mill pipeline 30 years ago. Nothing has changed
• Don’t blame Sierra Madre’s human residents for their bear problem