AB931 would limit the use of force to strictly a last resort, when officers have no other option to protect themselves or civilians.

Currently, police officers may use deadly force if their actions “are ‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them.” This standard was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 in Graham v. Connor.

The bill was spurred by a spate of civilian deaths, particularly minorities, at the hands of police, with the killing of an unarmed Stephon Clark by Sacramento police officers in March in particular serving as the catalyst for legislative action.

“AB931 is about preventing unnecessary deaths by clarifying police use-of-force,” said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego. “This bill is squarely in line with the best practices recognized by academics and best practices in the field.”

Additionally, Sen. Steve Bradford, D-Gardena, cited the need to protect communities of color.

The ACLU of California praised the development, tweeting, “We need the bill to address the policing crisis that has led to the deaths of far too many people.”

However, law enforcement groups, many of which have opposed the bill since its inception, will likely vigorously fight the bill’s passage. “We agree that more training can result in better outcomes, but there is a fundamental disagreement about raising the standards above what the Supreme Court has said,” one lobbyist for the California Police Chiefs Association told the Sacramento Bee.

AB931’s next test be the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Nearly 60 percent of voters in 2014 approved Prop. 47, which recategorized certain low-level drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, in an attempt to ease prison overpopulation. 

Since then, many have attempted to link criminal justice reforms like Prop. 47 with a spike in crime in 2015 and 2016. There was even a failed ballot proposal earlier this year that would have rolled back some reforms.

The PPIC found that the two-year rearrest rate for those released after serving sentences for Prop. 47 offenses was almost two points lower than individuals released before the reforms. Meanwhile, the two-year reconviction rate was more than 3 percent lower.

However, the study cautioned that “it is too early to know” how effective Prop. 47’s redirection of funding toward treatment for offenders was.

The study found that much of the purported increase in violent crime post-Prop. 47 was the result of methodological factors, such as police departments in years prior under-reporting violent crimes or the FBI expanding the definition of sexual crimes. Meanwhile, upticks in violence were already starting in 2013 and early 2014, before reforms were enacted.

With property crime, however, the study concluded that Prop. 47 was in part to blame. “It may have contributed to a rise in larceny thefts, which increased by roughly 9 percent (about 135 more thefts per 100,000 residents) compared to other states,” the report read.

Finally, while several thousand inmates were released as a direct result of Prop. 47, the PPIC concluded its effect was more apparent in a shift by law enforcement from arresting potential offenders to citing and releasing them.

Calling itself the California Public Safety Partnership, the group includes Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, and Sacramento County District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert. “These reforms make sure that truly violent criminals stay in jail and don’t get out early,” Schubert told the L.A. Times.

California voters in recent years have rolled back some of the state’s tougher criminal justice laws.

In 2014, Proposition 47 downgraded various nonviolent crimes – such as certain drug offenses and property crimes – from felonies to misdemeanors. The money saved was allocated to crime-prevention programs such as mental health and truancy prevention.

Proposition 57, passed in 2016, allowed those convicted of nonviolent felonies to apply for early parole, in addition to allowing certain inmates to earn credits toward release by participating in rehabilitation programs. These inmates still must go before the parole board.

Both ballot measures passed by comfortable margins.

The proposed initiative would expand the collection of DNA samples to seven misdemeanors that were felonies prior to Prop. 47’s implementation. Currently, DNA is collected only for felonies.

The initiative also makes serial theft – stealing more than $250 or the equivalent after two previous similar convictions – a felony. Under Prop. 47, the current threshold for felonies in cases of theft is $950.

While the measure’s sponsors cite “serious problems being caused by recent criminal justice reforms,” it’s unclear the effect Props. 47 and 57 have had on crime. Violent crime rates for 2016 are up 4.1 percent from 2015, but they are still well below the peak of violent crime rates in 1992, according to the 2016 California Crime Reports. Meanwhile, property crime was down 2.9 percent

The ballot measure’s proponents must obtain 365,880 signatures by the end of April 2018 to qualify for the November 2018 ballot.

The main policy is known as realignment. Pushed through by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, the two new laws allow “non-violent, non-serious and non-sex offenders to serve their sentence in county jails instead of state prisons,” according to an explanation from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The department says that no state prisoners had their time reduced and that the laws did not provide any early releases.

The second policy is Proposition 47, a statewide initiative that passed 60 percent to 40 percent in November 2014. As Ballotpedia explains, the initiative “classified ‘non-serious, nonviolent crimes’ as misdemeanors instead of felonies unless the defendant has prior convictions for murder, rape, certain sex offenses or certain gun crimes.” It also permitted resentencing “for those currently serving a prison sentence for any of the offenses that the initiative reduces to misdemeanors.” That measure did therefore lead to early releases.

The state passed a variety of other sentencing-reform measures beginning in 2010. For instance, California had long taken a tough-on-crime approach, including passage of the nation’s toughest “three strikes and you’re out” laws in 1994, in the midst of frighteningly high crime rates. But even that signature crime-fighting law was revised, as voters passed, 70 percent to 30 percent, a 2012 statewide initiative that required a life sentence only if the third strike were serious or violent.

The new laws reduced prison overcrowding, although they didn’t actually reduce the amount of tax dollars spent on the prison system. The big question: What have they done to crime rates? A spike in some crimes over that period has led to a vociferous debate, with Republicans and some moderate Democrats fanning fears of a crime wave. One Republican gubernatorial candidate, Abel Maldonado, ran for governor in 2014 on an anti-crime platform, but didn’t gain traction.

Currently, Democratic Assemblyman Jim Cooper, a former sheriff’s captain from Elk Grove, is leading efforts qualify a ballot measure for the 2018 general election that would roll back much of Proposition 47. It also would roll back the loosened parole requirements in Proposition 57, which passed on the 2016 statewide ballot, and expand the list of crimes that requires collection of the perpetrator’s DNA, according to an Associated Press report.

Such pushback is due in large part to fears of growing crime rates. “Since the passage of Proposition 47 by voters in 2014 and the signing of AB109 in 2011, violent crime has been on the rise in California, up 12 percent in 2015 statewide according to the FBI,” according to a statement in March by Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside County. Politifact double-checked his claim and found a one-year violent crime increase (from 2014 to 2015) of 8.4 percent.

That’s certainly enough to spark concern, but it’s hard to assess crime data based on short periods of time – and even harder to trace crime increases or decreases to any particular policy cause. New research from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice looked at the entire 2010-2016 period of criminal-justice policy reform and found some mixed results. Overall, however, the group explains that the state’s crime rate was “stable” over that time.

“Urban crime rates in California declined precipitously through the 1990s and 2000s,” wrote author Mike Males. “Since 2010, crime in California has stabilized, hovering near historically low levels.” Males compared the first six months of 2016 (the latest reporting period) with the first six months of 2010 and found that “total crime rates experienced no net change, while property crime declined by 1 percent and violent crime increased by 3 percent.”

National crime data show a small overall uptick nationwide, which might suggest that something other than California-only realignment and sentencing reform policies were at work here. Crime data often is affected more by local factors, and indeed the study finds that “crime rates at the local level have varied considerably.” For instance, crime rates shot up 18 percent in Downey, but dropped an astounding 29 percent in Santa Clara.

Regarding the big cities, the report found increased violent crime rates in Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Jose – but lower violent crime rates in Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. Likewise, some big cities (Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego) faced rising property crimes, but others (Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose) saw falling rates of property crime from 2010 to 2016.

The report found “no visible change” due to realignment and called for “more data” before “drawing conclusions about Prop. 47’s effect on crime.” Other studies from last year echo these conclusions. These numbers, based on the newest FBI statistics, suggest that current concerns about a justice-reform-driven crime wave are overblown.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

In a fresh bid to reform California’s criminal justice system, Sacramento lawmakers have begun to advance several bills, many aimed at softening juvenile punishment. “Democratic state senators Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles and Ricardo Lara of Bell Gardens are proposing four bills intended to keep more youthful offenders out of the criminal justice system,” as the Associated Press noted.

“State senators in California on Monday introduced an eight-bill justice reform package focused on juveniles that would create a minimum age incarceration standard, a ban on sentencing minors to life without parole and Miranda rights protections,” according to Courthouse News. “Senate Bill 190 would extend financial relief to families with children in the justice system by nixing court administrative fees, and Senate Bill 395 would require minors to consult with an attorney before waiving their rights during interrogations.” Senate Bill 439, another piece of legislation, would tweak jurisdictional rules to ensure minors under the age of 12 do not wind up in juvenile court.

String of changes

At a recent hearing around the bills, lines of support and opposition took familiar shape. “Witnesses urged lawmakers to support legislation they said would ensure the fair treatment of children under the law,” the Los Angeles Times recalled. “But law enforcement groups and prosecutors said it could keep authorities from holding offenders accountable and hinder officers from carrying out investigations.”

At a recent appearance at a Sacramento elementary school, the bills’ two sponsors worked to portray their changes in rational and moral terms. “Mitchell, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, acknowledged some minors are involved in serious crime,” Capital Public Radio reported. “But she spoke out against incarcerating children under 12 years old as if they were ‘pint-sized’ adults.”

Activists pushing to further liberalize California’s incarceration laws have seen statewide success focusing on the fraught relationship between crime and child punishment. “In recent years, state legislation and propositions have attempted to create greater court protections for young offenders and to lower the population of incarcerated youth, as research on brain development has found that children learn differently from adults and should be afforded a criminal justice approach centered on rehabilitation,” the Times noted separately. “The latest victory for criminal justice advocates was Proposition 57, which will now require a judge’s approval before most juvenile defendants can be tried in an adult court.”

Curbing prison culture 

But adult justice also received some attention, with proposed amendments “weakening drug enhancement sentencing procedures, nixing public defender reimbursement fees for individuals found innocent by the court and sealing arrest records of those not convicted of a crime,” according to Courthouse News. “The lawmakers hope the reforms will reduce county costs related to minor drug sentences and remove employment barriers for people accused but not convicted of a felony or misdemeanor.”

Other recent criminal justice reforms have advanced quickly in Sacramento. One, targeting abuses in prison snitch rewards, passed its first legislative test with flying colors. “Assembly Bill 359 on Tuesday sailed unanimously through the state Assembly Public Safety Committee,” as the Orange County Register noted. “Under the bill, snitches like Mexican Mafia members Raymond “Puppet” Cuevas and Jose “Bouncer” Paredes would no longer be able to live like kings behind bars, raking in as much as $3,000 a case as well as cartons of Marlboro cigarettes, fast food, Xbox machines and other perks.”

“The bill caps all monetary and nonmonetary payments to informants at $100 per case, including any investigatory work. Currently, the cap is $50 per case for testimony and no limit in compensation for investigation,” the paper observed. “Additionally, the bill requires prosecutors to keep databases that track informant work and locations, and to turn detailed informant histories over to defense attorneys no later than 30 days before the preliminary hearing.”

Michael Christopher Mejia, 26, had been arrested five times in the last year before he killed veteran officer Keith Boyer during the scene of an accident on February 20. Mejia was under the supervision of a probation officer, benefiting from the provisions under AB109, the bill enacting so-called “realignment” by shifting prisoners from state prisons to local jails, or releasing them entirely under supervision to deal with overcrowding.

Since its enactment, law enforcement agencies and politicians have warned it poses a threat to public safety, with Southern California police chiefs calling it “dangerous public policy” back in 2013.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors cited AB109, as well as Propositions 47 and 57, for creating “additional and considerable” safety threats to police departments.

“We need to wake up. Enough is enough. You’re passing these propositions, you’re creating these laws. … It’s not good for our community (and) it’s not good for our officers,” Whittier police chief Jeff Piper told the media in an emotionally charged press conference.

During a time of heightened scrutiny of law enforcement nationwide, in part due to the perceived anti-cop rhetoric from groups like Black Lives Matter, California is becoming more and more of a flashpoint in the debate over how to confront the issue of violent crime and police engagement.

“As soon as realignment became a reality here in California, we knew as police chiefs that it was going to be a big problem,” said Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas.

However, UC Irvine criminologist Charis Kubrin says the research indicates that AB109 isn’t responsible for an increase in violent criminal activity in the state, declaring that “there is no doubt in my mind that AB109 had zero impact.”

But as The Mercury News notes, few reviews of the law exist because the state did not apportion funds for studying AB109’s effects. Furthermore, four officers killed in Southern California in the last six months were by repeat offenders, including the murders of a Palm Springs officer and an L.A. County Deputy Sheriff, both which made national headlines.

While it appears more inquiry may be needed to understand the full effects of prison reform legislation, cities like Los Angeles are continuing to grapple with an increase in violent crime, with homicides rising for a third year in a row, reversing a decline that began in the 1990s.

Drew Gregory Lynch is a CalWatchdog contributer

@_drewgregory

Indeed, the system is so ubiquitous – bail-bonds offices cluster around courthouses – that it’s just an accepted part of the system. Yet that could all be changing. As Calwatchdog reported last month, reforming the state’s bail system will be a top priority as legislators return to the Capitol. Sure enough, the press conference was held shortly before the new session came to order and included several prominent Democratic legislators.

After an arrest, a judge will typically set a bail amount based on the seriousness of the alleged crime and on the defendant’s perceived flight risk. The defendant can post the full amount or pay a bondsman 10 percent of the bail, which is nonrefundable. The bail company assumes the financial risk if the defendant is a “no show.” The bond is meant to provide a strong financial incentive for the defendant to show up at the appointed court date.

But Newsom and the assembled legislators argued that the current system is antiquated and unfair – the “modern equivalent of debtors’ prison,” as sponsors of a reform bill put it. “We punish poor people literally for being poor,” argued Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland. “In many cases, if you have enough money to pay your bail, you can get out of jail regardless of whether you are a danger to the public or a flight risk.”

And the converse is true, supporters say: Those who are poor but pose little danger or flight risk must stay in jail until the wheels of justice turn. They often turn slowly, which means people in tough financial straits risk losing their job, their home and their car as they languish in a jail cell. A single parent risks losing his or her children to Child Protective Services. It’s a tough burden for those who have not been found guilty of a crime.

It’s the first day of session, so the legislation includes intent language: “It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to safely reduce the number of people detained pretrial, while addressing racial and economic disparities in the pretrial system, to ensure that people are not held in pretrial detention simply because of their inability to afford money bail.”

Legislators say their intent is to “reform” the system, but appears the ultimate intent is to move to a risk-based system of the type embraced by the federal government and some local jurisdictions such as Washington, D.C. In other words, details are still hazy, and the bail-bonds industry has plenty of time to gear up for what could pose an existential threat.

The industry has argued that it offers an economical system that minimizes the costs to the court system. That’s because bond companies privately assure – without extensive court monitoring – that defendants show up for their trial. But critics argue that far more people remain in jail than would be the case with a risk-based assessment – and that the jail costs (around $100 a day in California) counteract any other savings.

The California legislation is part of a nationwide movement by civil-rights and civil-liberties groups to change the pretrial system across the country. The focus is less on cost savings than on justice-related issues. As a 2013 research paper from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation explained, “A study, using data from state courts, found that defendants who were detained for the entire pretrial period were over four times more likely to be sentenced to jail and over three times more likely to be sentenced to prison than defendants who were released at some point pending trial.”

The reason? Those in jail awaiting trial are “more likely to cop a plea,” said Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Van Nuys Democrat and co-author of the legislation. If a defendant is in jail awaiting trial, and faces the prospect of losing everything he or she owns, then there’s intense pressure to do something – anything – to get out. An arrest doesn’t mean guilt, so a person out on bail can continue life as usual while the process plays out. Hertzberg’s office notes that “63 percent of inmates in county jails are awaiting trial or sentencing.”

The American Civil Liberties Union pointed to racial disparities. “Nationally, bond amounts for African American men are 35 percent higher than bond amounts for white men,” according to an ACLU fact sheet handed out at the press conference. “Latino men’s bond amounts are 19 percent higher than the amounts for white men.” One woman who spoke at the event talked about a relative’s situation. To her family, the $5,000 bond amount might as well have been $10 million, she said, given her family’s lack of resources to pay it.

The bail-bonds industry points to a U.S. District Court decision in October that slaps down the due-process criticisms made by bail reformers. “The state’s interest in ensuring criminal defendants appear for trial dates is a legitimate one, and detaining individuals before their arraignment is rationally related to that legitimate interest,” rule Judge Troy Nunley.

Furthermore, the industry-backed American Bail Coalition argues that “surety bail outperforms every form of public sector pretrial release and own recognizance release as well.” In a July article, the Washington Post evaluated the District of Columbia’s pretrial system, which uses risk assessments rather than bail. It interviewed those who found the system to be a success, but also pointed to a couple of “high-profile lapses,” including an incident where “a man released from court on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a police officer was charged in a fatal stabbing two days later on a Metro train.”

Bail reformers point to cases of people who have been killed or committed suicide while in pretrial detention. The Arnold Foundation report pointed to a study showing “that low-risk defendants who were detained pretrial for more than 24 hours were more likely to commit new crimes not only while their cases were pending, but also years later.”

This obviously is a complicated issue, and the stakes are high given that people’s lives are in the balance. It’s particularly germane in California, given that the state’s historic realignment – moving state prisoners to local jails, to conform to a federal prison overcrowding order – puts an increasing premium on jail space. This much seems likely: More Californians will be thinking about the bail-bonds system as the new session gets underway.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

But in recent years, a variety of criminal-justice reforms have been pushing the pendulum back in the other direction, albeit in a relatively quiet way. In 2014, California voters approved Proposition 47, which reduced some crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Furthermore, Gov. Jerry Brown succeeded in implementing his “realignment” plan that moved many state prisoners to county jails.

Crime has gone up in major California cities since then and it’s not clear how much those measures contributed to the problem. But it doesn’t appear the recent uptick has slowed the push for reform.

In the Nov. 8 general election, voters rejected an effort to repeal the death penalty and, by a close margin, appear to have approved a measure designed to speed up executions. Nevertheless, voters also approved Proposition 57 by a wide margin. As the Legislative Analyst’s Office explains, the measure will “increase the number of inmates eligible for parole consideration” and make “changes to state law to require that youths have a hearing in juvenile court before they can be transferred to adult court.” The marijuana-legalization measure voters also approved would enable judges to expunge some people’s marijuana convictions.

The ballot box isn’t the only place where reform is moving forward. When the Legislature reconvenes in December, some legislators will almost certainly introduce bills that would reform the state’s system of “money bail.” It’s part of a nationwide reform movement headed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

Many are unfamiliar with the system by which criminal defendants post a bond that allows them to avoid jail time as their case winds its way through the system. A judge will set a bail amount that reflects the severity of the alleged crime and the defendant’s perceived flight risk. The defendant can post the full amount, which would be forfeited if he or she doesn’t show up at the appointed court date. Those who lack the resources also can go to a bail bonds company and pay a nonrefundable percentage (commonly 10 percent) of the bail. The bail bondsman posts the full amount and assumes liability to assure the defendant shows up for trial.

The bail bonds industry argues the system works well as it is designed. “When it comes to guaranteeing appearance at court, surety bail outperforms every form of public sector pretrial release and own recognizance release as well,” according to the American Bail Coalition. The group, supported by bail-bonds companies, argues the current system also offers a cost-effective approach that costs the courts nothing for to supervise 2 million released defendants each year. Bail defenders also point to the taxes paid by the bail industry – and cite studies showing cost savings to counties.

But critics of the system, including the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, have raised some concerns. “Over time the discussion about bail (has become): Does it really serve its purpose of keeping people safe? Because if you’re wealthy and you commit a heinous crime, you can make bail,” said Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, in a March 2016 editorial board meeting with the Sacramento Bee. The problem, as the Bee and others have raised, is that poor people often don’t have the financial wherewithal to post bail. That forces them to stay in jail while wealthier people get to go home on their own recognizance and await trial. The chief justice has created a task force to review the issue.

Critics say the bail situation also encourages poor people to accept plea bargains, given that months in jail — and our court system moves very slowly — could cause their lives to collapse. If they are in jail rather than working, they lose their apartments and their possessions. Their kids are often taken by Child Protective Services. It’s a problem not just for the poor people who are affected, but also for the state’s perpetually overcrowded jail system. More than 60 percent of people in California jails have not yet been sentenced for any crime.

As the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California reports: “From 2000 to 2009 (the latest comprehensive data available for felony cases), California’s large urban counties relied on pretrial detention to a much greater extent than did large urban counties elsewhere in the United States. … Part of the difference in detention rates may be attributed to California’s higher bail amounts. The median bail amount in California ($50,000) is more than five times the median amount in the rest of the nation (less than $10,000). Research has demonstrated that pretrial release rates generally decline as bail amounts increase.”

In July, some Democratic state legislators held discussions in Oakland on the matter. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said that “at least 29 jurisdictions have developed ‘risk-assessment’ models, which allow court and pretrial staff to use data and other evidence to determine whether a person should be released,” according to a news report. That’s a likely model for coming proposals: shifting toward a system based more on judicial risk assessments than on the ability to post a bond. Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, announced his intent to introduce legislation when the Legislature is back in session.

The U.S. Justice Department also has weighed in on behalf of bail reform in a Georgia case. The department argues that “bail practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay for their release” violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, a U.S. district judge rejected a similar argument in a Sacramento County case.

“The state’s interest in ensuring criminal defendants appear for trial dates is a legitimate one, and detaining individuals before their arraignment is rationally related to that legitimate interest,” U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley wrote last month in the case. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Nunley refused, at least for now, to dismiss a claim that the bail system is unfairly punitive.” Nunley is an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Other similar cases are moving forward across the country, including in San Francisco. There, Public Defender Jeff Adachi commissioned a study finding that black inmates are more likely to be kept in jail awaiting trial than their white inmates facing similar charges. Clearly, this issue will be heating up in the coming years, with a new Republican administration throwing more uncertainty into the situation, given the role the Obama Justice Department has played in the matter.

Critics also note the current system isn’t cost free, and that some states have moved to a risk-assessment system. “Risk assessment detention not only stems some of the unjustified inequalities on the impoverished but it also has proven to save the state money and actually prevent further crime by trying to keep the accused employed and out of trouble,” argues my R Street Institute colleague, Arthur Rizer, director of criminal justice policy. The current system, he adds, ends up “bloating our already bloated jails.”

Not all reformers look to eliminate money bail. Various compromises could emerge, including measures that eliminate bail for certain cases, or efforts to create easier ways for poor defendants to afford bonds. This is an emerging reform movement, so we’ve yet to see the kind of compromises that might emerge in the California Legislature. 

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

National Sunshine Week — an effort to increase and encourage government transparency — has come and gone in California while multiple types of state secrecy continue to draw fire from lawmakers and citizens.

Budgeting has topped the list of recent complaints. “The state of California spends nearly a quarter trillion dollars annually, but taxpayers aren’t allowed to see where that money goes,” warned OpenTheBooks.com, which has demanded state officials release its line-by-line state vendor payments. “This information should be available through California’s open records law, but the last two controllers, John Chiang and currently Betty Yee, told us: stop asking because the records aren’t accessible,” the organization’s founder and CEO claimed.

“The Controllers of California – John Chiang and Betty Yee – aren’t arguing against the law. Instead, they’re ignoring the law and a transparency revolution that is sweeping this country at all levels of government. The Controllers don’t cite a single provision of the California Open Records Act or a legal exemption to justify their behavior, and they aren’t fulfilling their fiduciary duty under the law to ‘assist us’ in gathering the public records.”

Chiang has tried to build a reputation as a relatively pro-transparency reformer. He proposed a law, introduced as Assembly Bill 2833 by Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova, “that would require alternative investments such as hedge funds to publicly disclose their fees to public pension plans,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The state has committed to contribute $96 million this year toward the university [of California]’s unfunded pension liability. Yet, last year alone, UC’s pension plan paid out $97 million in fees to the hedge fund managers who are delivering mediocre returns for the plan, according to our analysis.”

String of controversies

But in recent months, transparency and accountability have become watchwords for reform across a host of flashpoint issues in California politics and policy.

In education, trouble with the state’s community college system has led its governing board to “begin searching for a replacement for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, Western Association of Schools and Colleges,” as the Sacramento Bee reported. “The organization, which regulates two-year schools in California, Hawaii and American territories in the Pacific, has been under fire for an inconsistent, oblique and overly punitive accreditation process.”

With a widespread shortage of execution drugs used in the now-familiar “cocktails,” officials have now aimed to “let corrections officials choose from four types of powerful barbiturates to execute prisoners,” according to KCRA Sacramento. “A choice would be made for each execution, depending on which drug is available. The single drug would replace the series of three drugs that were last used in 2006, when 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen was executed for ordering a triple murder.”

“The plan to use barbiturates to execute inmates sentenced to die in the most populous U.S. state drew fire from religious activists, who called capital punishment grisly and anti-democratic at a hearing in Sacramento,” Reuters reported. “Law-and-order advocates urged its adoption.”

“If the new protocol is adopted by corrections officials and voters do not outlaw the death penalty next November, the state could theoretically begin executing 18 prisoners who have exhausted their appeals. Legal challenges to the lethal injection drug, however, could drag on for years.”

Opponents of the new plan insisted that it amounted to a trial-and-error approach. “The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is suing to obtain at least 79,000 corrections department documents related to lethal injections,” KCRA noted. “It says the regulations may lack enough safeguards to prevent the state from using backdoor ways to obtain execution drugs that manufacturers never intended for that purpose.” Past cocktails have been harshly criticized for sometimes failing to execute inmates as quickly and painlessly as lethal injection was intended to do.

Languishing inmates

Much of the frustration around the issue stems from the unique backlog that has built up on the state’s Death Row. “It’s been 10 years since California executed its last death row inmate. Since then, the death row population has grown to 745,” KQED noted. “Since 1978, 117 death row inmates have died, the vast majority from natural causes and suicide.”

Although California’s Death Row has ballooned to an extraordinary size over the years, other states have found themselves burdened by court requirements in similar ways. Florida, second to California in the size of its death row population, recently faced a Supreme Court ruling that has thrown the status of its condemned inmates into question. “Death penalty prosecutions are stalled, and state lawmakers are hustling to write and pass a new death penalty law before their session ends in six weeks,” the New York Times reported. “Also in question is whether the 390 inmates awaiting execution in Florida will remain on death row or be resentenced to life in prison.” The predicament, which has gained the attention of reformers and activists across  the political spectrum, has contributed to the rise of execution reform as a hot-button issue around the country.

Divided opinion

California’s own controversy has strengthened amid a sharp divide in statewide public opinion over capital punishment. Voters, a new poll found, have “now equally divided between scrapping the death penalty altogether and speeding up the path to executing inmates on the nation’s largest death row,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “The poll found that 47 percent of voters favor replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole in California, up from 40 percent in 2014. But at the same time, the poll shows that 48 percent of registered voters would support proposals to accelerate the state’s notoriously slow system of resolving death penalty appeals to pick up the pace of executions.” Both those proposals were likely to wind up on this election year’s ballot in the form of initiatives.

Opinions have split even among Death Row inmates themselves. “Opinions vary, just like I’m sure they vary on the outside,” one inmate, Charles Crawford II, told KQED. “Some of us are against it, some of us not so much. Some of us, it’s like if they’re going to do it, do it and not have us sittin’ here for 20 or 30 years.”