Senator George Runner
Serving the 17th District which incorporates portions of the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura and Kern counties.

In the ongoing California prison saga, the federal three-judge panel that was appointed last year to upgrade prison healthcare is expected to release a proposal tomorrow that will, among other provisions, recommend that the state divert 30,000 non-violent felons from state prison back to the counties.
Republicans – and some Democrats – are opposed to this plan for two simple reasons: We know that there are few truly non-violent inmates in state prison and we believe the illegal aliens who are occupying our prison cells should be dealt with first.

Let’s start with the first problem of releasing so-called non-violent inmates. Most people understand that anyone who has made their way through the state prison system didn’t arrive there because they ran a stop light or because they were caught with a Baggie of marijuana. They had to work pretty aggressively – leaving victims in their paths.

Furthermore, first-time drug offenders are not sentenced to state prison. Proposition 36 precludes imprisonment for first or second time offenders who possess drugs of any type –including heroine and methamphetamine.

We need to drop the notion that non-violent inmates exist. What does exist are “non-violent offenses,” but even that term is misleading and here’s why:

Non-violent offenses include such offenses as residential burglary; felony in possession of a firearm; transporting explosives and tampering with water supply. In fact, most types of assault are not classified violent.

Do the people who are guilty of these crimes deserve a slap on the wrist? Do we want them in our neighborhoods any earlier than necessary? Most people would say no.

Regarding illegal alien inmates, the federal government should step up to the plate and house these prisoners in federal facilities – as required by law – or reimburse California for doing the federal government’s job.

But neither scenario is happening. Instead, California continues to bear the burden of housing, feeding and providing health care services for wards of the federal government–to the detriment of our cities and towns.

Therefore, it’s presumptuous of the federal judges to demand the California Correctional Department to redirect 30,000 convicted felons into our neighborhoods while ignoring the federal government’s obligation to deal with the 30,000 illegal aliens taking up prison cells.

The obvious solution to California’s prison crowding problem is to move the illegal aliens to federal penitentiaries or build more beds in California prisons using federal dollars.