Proposition 47 PrisonersTop of Mind with Julie Rose • Season 1, Episode 179, Segment 2
Nov 16, 2015 • 20m
Guest: Milena Blake, JD, Staff Attorney on Stanford’s Justice Advocacy Project
Overcrowded prisons are a problem nationwide, but they’ve become so serious in California that the US Supreme Court ordered a significant reduction in prison headcount by next year. Initially, the plan involved releasing some prisoners early and transferring others from federal prisons to county-run jails with more space.
Then California voters got involved. Last year they passed a proposition that converted six types of non-violent felonies into misdemeanors. And it’s retroactive, so a Stanford Law School report says some 13,000 people doing time in California prisons and jails on those offenses have had their sentences reduced and been released in the last year.