Proposition 6 & 9
by Luis A. Lopez
The November 2008 General Election is approaching, and it is time to witness the mindless propositions placed on the California ballot.
Proposition 6 wastes 1 billion dollars in its first year. The billion dollars will be taken from the California budget that will cut funding for K-12 education, higher education, health care, transportation, housing, and environmental protection. The proposition grants legal stereotyping to the California Justice Department (CJD) by allowing the department to place individuals on their gang database by suspicion alone. Thus, leading to the possibility to falsely charge individuals as a gang member if the person is ever arrested. Unfortunately with the power to do this, the Justice Department can extensively abuse this law in their favor. In addition, the database can be used to inflate statistical data of gangs and gang members and could be used by the Justice Department to later ask for additional funds.
The proposition also focuses on juvenile offenders. If they are inputted into the database as gang members, they can be charged like adults. Youth 14 years or older will be charged as an adult if convicted of a gang-related felony, but if an individual is registered as a gang member then the crime will be gang-related with additional stipulations such as being passed for both adult and youth offenders is that the evidence rule will be altered. It will be changed to allow simple hearsay statements to be used in a court of law without questioning a motive or a biased for any individual that testifies. Adding to its already absurd propositions, it would also deny undocumented workers bail if charged with violent or gang-related crime, and the individual will be reported to Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), but once again the legal stereotyping can be abused with no restrictions.
When it comes to everyday living, the proposition targets poor people by making it mandatory for people that live in public housing subsidies to summit an annual criminal background check and if found to have a recent crime they will be kicked out of their homes. This would increase the number of homeless people and could actually increase poverty crimes drastically.
Similarly, Proposition 9 spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to simply keep people in prison. Its main goal is to limit state-paid defense lawyers, lengthen parole hearings for a lifer from 5 to 15 years, and limit visitations rights of loved ones. Besides these components most of Proposition 9 is already in affect when California Proposition 8 was passed in 1982. Proposition 9 brings nothing new, but does establish inhuman treatment and a necessity to waste money during an economic crisis. California has already had to borrow money for its economic shortfall and these two propositions are on the ballot. Both propositions have a need to waste money by making sure that more people are incarcerated for longer sentencing with less credible witnesses and legal stereotyping.
If homicide and crime has gone down in the last five years as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says than why are these proposition even needed if they have no guarantee of anything besides overcrowding prisons, increase of homelessness, wasting billions in needed funds, making it even more difficult for an individual to prosper by attaining an educating, and limiting the resources that hospitals have. With all of this into consideration it is simple to say NO on 6 & 9.
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Fall 2008
Update 1