NO ON PROPOSITION 5

Proposition 5 Means Well, but the Measure Aimed at Rehabilitating
Addicts Would Create Chaos.

Proposition 5 follows in the tradition of California ballot measures
lined with good intentions and stuffed with disaster. It lures voters
with a comforting mirage: a revamped and rational policy for treating
drug addiction as an illness and confronting it through
rehabilitation instead of punishment. But that's not what it would
deliver. If it passes, Californians would soon learn that they had
swept away the state's few successful diversion programs, inflicted
chaos on the parole system, layered on a staggering new bureaucracy
and set back the cause of modernizing drug treatment.

On the surface, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act seems to
be the logical next step after Proposition 36, a measure Californians
passed in 2000 that mandates treatment instead of prison for most
people convicted of drug possession. But this step isn't so logical.
Under Proposition 5, an addict caught breaking into a home would be
exempt from incarceration if his reason was to feed his addiction and
if he agreed to treatment. Judges would likewise be unable to jail
someone who stole a car, abused a spouse, drove under the influence
(and injured someone), possessed an illegal weapon or committed a
host of other crimes -- as long as the perpetrator swore that drugs
made him do it. Even dealers profiting from others' addictions would
be offered diversion. Addicts would get repeated chances at rehab
instead of incarceration, no matter how seriously they tried -- or
didn't -- to kick their habit.

There are two huge problems with that approach. First, it would
jeopardize public safety. Second, it doesn't work. Treatment
professionals know that addicts need a "moment of clarity" -- a point
at which they hit bottom, or close enough to it that they can soberly
acknowledge the state they are in and the need for change. Often,
that moment comes after the addict skips rehab or fails a drug test
and is facing a weekend behind bars.

Not all rehab programs are equal. For hard-core addicts, involuntary
programs -- to which they are often sentenced by drug court -- are
considerably more effective than voluntary ones.

One of the biggest problems with Proposition 5 is that it would
repeatedly cycle addicts through ineffective voluntary programs,
which impose few consequences for failure. They're only sent to
involuntary treatment (under which they go to jail if they fail a
drug test or don't show up) as a last resort, after they've committed
a series of crimes. This would cripple the most successful programs
in the state.

This isn't the way forward. Voters should reject Proposition 5 and
demand that the state's criminal justice system finally get the
serious examination it requires -- in Sacramento, where flaws can be
worked out, rather than cemented in a well-meaning but ill-considered
ballot measure.

NO ON PROPOSITION 6

With the State Scrambling for Funds, Proposition 6 Would Add $1
Billion in Confused Anti-Crime Spending.

California just cut, borrowed and wished its way out of a
$15.2-billion budget shortfall, but it still must find $8 billion to
bring its severely overcrowded prisons up to constitutional standard.
The state got into this fix by blindly adopting programs that swallow
huge chunks of the budget but add no new money. Voters make it worse
by passing tough-on-crime laws that fill up the prisons -- or would,
if the prisons weren't already bursting.

This is the moment to come to our senses. The folly of automated
spending increases is finally apparent. Federal judges are overseeing
the prisons. Violent crime is dropping. The state has the opportunity
to do a sweeping revamp both of the criminal justice system and the
fatally flawed robo-budget.

Yet here comes Proposition 6, like a confused beast escaped from some
other decade. Simply clueless about where California is in 2008, this
supposed anti-gang measure would add new spending mandates -- nearly
$1 billion to start -- and would bring the state closer to insolvency
with automatic annual increases pegged to inflation. Of course, it
would not raise taxes to supply the money, which would have to come
from cuts in other programs, most likely the social service
investments that help keep California's youth out of gangs in the first place.

It would impose new spending mandates on counties but block them from
using certain funds for drug or mental-health treatment. It would
mandate new jail and prison construction, as if California weren't
already being forced by federal courts to ease inmate crowding. It
would compel courts to treat more juvenile offenders as adults.

In addition to being a budget buster, Proposition 6 is a bureaucracy
builder, creating a new state office to distribute public-service
announcements about crime.

Voters can learn a valuable lesson from a 2006 anti-sex-offender
measure that was so flawed it made hundreds of offenders homeless and
more likely to re-offend. That initiative also failed to mention who
would pay for its mandate to track ex-cons for life by satellite, so
that answer has been wedged into Proposition 6, which in turn creates
more problems that likely will require more ballot measures -- unless
we stop this foolhardy ballot-box policing now.

The Times urges a no vote on Proposition 6.

NO ON PROPOSITION 9

Prop. 9 Constitutionally Upends the Criminal Justice System by
Involving Victims' Families in Prosecutions.

The Times recommends a straightforward approach to the measures on
this November's ballot that tinker with California's criminal justice
system: No, no and no.

Add Proposition 9 to the terrible troika that includes propositions 5
and 6 discussed above. It in part duplicates a "victims' bill of
rights" measure that Californians adopted at the ballot box 26 years
ago, but it would move many of its provisions from the statute books
into the state Constitution. In addition, new rights would be
recognized for family members of crime victims, most often in parole
hearings, where families would be able to appoint someone to speak
for them. The frequency of hearings would be reduced.

The measure contains some good ways to make life more bearable for
the loved ones of crime victims. For example, it requires police
officers who respond to crime scenes to give cards to grieving family
members that clue them in on what to do -- where to seek help, what
happens next in the criminal justice process, what rights they have
in court. The problem is that this provision, as well as several less
beneficial ones in Proposition 9, would be engraved in the state
Constitution, subject to change only by a three-quarters vote of the
Legislature or another ballot measure. That makes it extraordinarily
difficult to correct errors or update the law.

Officers in Orange County already pass out cards to victims'
families, and a better approach would be for lawmakers to insist that
police across the state do the same.

Other provisions may appear similarly humane but actually upend the
criminal justice system in a naive attempt to "even the playing
field" between defendants and victims' families. The American legal
system intentionally and properly distances families from
prosecutions; the goal is evenhanded justice. The level of punishment
a criminal receives should not depend on how persistent a particular
family is in pleading for punishment or blocking parole. Civilized
justice rejects vendetta and instead places retribution in the hands
of the entire society. It may seem depersonalizing, but that's a
goal, not a defect, of our system.

If the concern is protection of families from further victimization,
as proponents claim, that goal can be met without granting families a
new and inappropriate role in prosecutions. The Times urges a no vote
on Proposition 9.