Failed presidential bids often have a terrible afterlife, plaguing us long
after the bidder has faded from the scene. Remember Gov. Pete Wilson, an
exceptionally nasty Republican governor of California? Years ago, Wilson
geared up for his doomed hopes for national office by putting forward savage
laws aimed at young people, of whom respectable California voters supposedly
live in mortal fear.
Wilson passed on to all the usual rewards awaiting an ex-governor, but his
anti-youth bill survives, and has a rendezvous with California's voters as
an initiative on the ballot, March 7, designated as Prop. 21, nestling next
to its consort in intolerance, Prop. 22, which is the Knight initiative,
banning all forms of marriage except those between a girl and a guy.
These are the only two props on the California ballot that get a specific
thumbs up from the state's Republican Party. Mindful of the gay voter, the
Democrats are against the Knight initiative, and on Prop. 21, they take no
position at all.
The so-called gang violence and juvenile-crime prevention initiative
derives from the great mid-1990s panic about feral youth, when crime pundits
like Professor John DiIulio were rampaging across the Wall Street Journal's
editorial pages, raising the alarm about a coming wave of youthful
super-predators robbing and killing the older citizenry at will.
It's turned out that DiIulio and his fellows were spectacularly wrong in
their predictions, and in a just world, would be relieved of tenure status
and sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service working their pooper
scoopers in public parks. As with adult crime, the juvenile stats have been
plummeting down in all categories. But by that time, legislators like Wilson
had seized on DiIulio's alarums.
Prop. 21 is a typically Californian effort to address the present crisis in
education. The present system is insufficiently rigorous in the overall
mission of ensuring that errant youth will mature into hardened criminals.
As matters now stand, a young person who spray-paints a bus or a building
will not necessarily face the proper sanction of being tossed into state
prison as a felon, raped by older inmates, denied all possibility of
education and moral self-improvement, and then, after a number of years,
turned loose as a traumatized, disenfranchized ex-con with no skills and a
skull full of terrible anger. Now, that's no way to educate a boy!
So -- let's suppose 14-year-old Albert B. sprays a bus. Under existing law,
he would have to commit $50,000 worth of damage to qualify for a felony
charge. Prop. 21 lowers the threshold to $400. Under present law, Albert
could be supervised on informal or formal probation, either at home or in a
juvenile hall, or in a group home or camp. He could receive a variety of
prevention, intervention, supervision and detention services. This
discretionary system has many merits. Over two-thirds of teenagers put on
informal probation never get arrested again, precisely the kind of result
Prop. 21 is designed to obliterate. Under its provisions, informal probation
will be more or less eliminated. A minor will have to appear in court or
before a court representative before he can be released. A parent will have
to appear in court before the youth can be released from detention.
So, after his tagging, Albert B. could be doing a year in jail for felony
defacement of property, with the offense permanently on file. Present law
seals the record of youthful offenders for violent or serious offenses. The
record can't be opened for at least six years. Not anymore if Prop. 21 goes
through. The new law would prohibit forever the sealing of records for some
offenses when a minor is 14 years or older. It would also require the
Department of Justice to report the complete criminal record of any youthful
felon. Albert's youthful past will be set to catch up with him for the rest
of his life. Let him try to go back to school, get a loan, get a job.
Gangs? Oh, yes, Prop. 21 recognizes the perennial ripeness of the G-word as
a means to criminalize the next generation of blacks and Hispanics, not to
mention Vietnamese, Hmong, and other groups. Prop. 21 loosens the legal
definition of what it means to be a gang member. Under present law,
prosecutors have to prove a gang member devotes all or substantial amounts
of his time to gang activity. Now, all the cops have to do is establish
"active participation."
The new law would add the crime of conspiracy to the list of gang-related
offenses, so Albert B. could get prosecuted, even though he was not directly
involved in a gang's illegal activities. There would be mandatory
registration as a gang member, thus, allowing unremitting scrutiny and
control by the state (i.e. expanded wire-tapping powers), with Albert B.
standing the risk of being put away for "failing to register as a gang
member." And yes, the death penalty is tucked in there, as the possible
sanction for a "gang-related" killing.
It's hard to say whether California's voters have had their fill of "lock
'em up and throw away the key." Do they really want to increase yet again
the state's immense gulag of prisons, and needlessly criminalize thousands
of young folk in the coming years?
To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other
columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
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