SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Crime survivors and law enforcement leaders on Monday criticized a legal system they said has gone too far in reversing get-tough-on-crime policies of past decades as they stood before hundreds of photographs of crime victims as part of their annual Capitol rally.
They urged voters to support a ballot initiative that would roll back portions of measures passed in 2014 and 2016 that critics say impede investigations and free violent offenders too soon.
Crime Victims United of California President Nina Salarno Besselman said it’s needed “to restore balance to our criminal justice system.”
On the opposite side, a reform group wants to further scale back what was once the nation’s toughest law targeting repeat offenders.
Both initiatives could be before voters this November; backers are in the process of gathering the nearly 366,000 signatures needed to put each on the ballot. The tug of war comes amid get-tough rhetoric from the Trump administration and against a backdrop of court decisions that capped the state’s prison population.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, on his way out of office, has warned against repealing the reduced criminal penalties. On Monday, he asked victims to “remember a life is not just vengeance, it’s also redemption and forgiveness.”
https://apnews.com/4356b00e58594588b...m=APWestRegion
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