Don’t Do The Crime…

Don’t Do The Crime…

We all know the saying: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”. It’s been around since the 1960’s but was made popular by Sammy Davis Jr’s singing the Baretta TV detective show theme. It’s a wise if not catchy proverb that plainly states you should know the consequences of your actions. If you commit a crime, you should be prepared to go to prison. Too bad it doesn’t apply to us here in California.

Why doesn’t this apply in California? Because California doesn’t know the difference between criminals and law-abiding citizens. Okay, that’s not quite true. They do know the difference, it’s just they give all the legal consideration, protections and opportunities to the criminals who are committing crimes while threatening and penalizing the law-abiding citizens who are doing nothing but obeying the law.

Proposition 47 reclassified many crimes as misdemeanors and as a result put more criminals back on the streets and increased the crime rate in every city and town in the state. Proposition 57 redefined crimes such as assault with a deadly weapon, rape of an unconscious person, human trafficking involving sex acts with minors, drive-by shootings and assault with a deadly weapon on peace officer as “non-violent” felonies eligible for early release. And near the end of last year, California’s Governor signed SB 620 which removed the mandatory sentencing enhancement from the Penal Code for felony cases in which a firearm was used and placed it at the sole discretion of the judge presiding over the case.

According to Lizzie Buchen, Legislative Advocate with the ACLU of California, which sponsored the measure, “SB 620 is a critical step toward a more fair and equitable justice system in California. For far too long, extreme sentencing enhancements have fueled mass incarceration, failed to deter crimes, and disproportionately ensnared people of color.”

As you may suspect, I do not concur.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of sentencing enhancements or the litany of superfluous charges that get tacked on to a single act of crime. It’s all the result of a system gone to hell due to judges who think they are politicians and politicians who think they are judges. If you have punishments that are too harsh to someone, you have to create laws to make things easier. If punishments aren’t harsh enough to someone, you have to create laws to make them harder. The result is all the enhancements and add-on crimes to make punishment harsher before all the breaks are applied.

Tell me; is a victim any more or less dead if you kill them with a firearm or your bare hands? Does it make a difference if it was in a home, a school zone or a public street? What if the criminal committing the homicide was in a gang or the husband / wife / partner of the victim? What if they were screaming racial, homophobic or xenophobic slurs at the time? How is any of that going to make the victim any more or less dead? Yet in order to secure a “fair sentence”- fair being a very relative term depending on which side of the court you are sitting on — you have to have all these enhancements and other sentencing considerations in place.

Here’s a thought… The listed penalty for a crime of ‘whatever’ is three to five years. If you take responsibility for your actions and willing to work toward a better life, you get three. If you are a complete ass who doesn’t care about anything but finding your next victim, you get five. Not only is it simple, but then judges can stop trying to administer their individual brands of social justice from the bench and politicians can get back to solving the problems that encourage crime in the first place.

Meanwhile here in California, we have politicians who are telling the law-abiding citizens, the ones who are NOT committing any crimes, to give up more and more of their Constitutional rights in the name of “public safety”, while guaranteeing the criminals, the ones who ARE committing the crimes, will face the least amount of punishment possible, if any at all. Does that sound like a formula for effective “public safety”?

Perhaps our politicians should update this common saying to reflect their new values for California. Do the crime, you won’t do time.

Bob

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