Politics: No on Prop 9

This proposition makes various adjustments to the criminal justice system.

All 5 newspapers I checked (SD Union-Trib, SF Chron, Sac Bee, Mercury and LAT) came out against it.

Here is SD Union-Tribune's analysis:

California's prison system is in such a dysfunctional state that many lawmakers and top corrections officials assume it is only a matter of time before a federal judge will finally follow through on his threat to take over the 33 prisons and their 170,000 inmates. A combination of overcrowding and a perverse management arrangement – one in which the prison guard union shares oversight authority with the state executives who are supposed to be the guards' bosses – has created a money-hemorrhaging department that the polarized Legislature seems unable or unwilling to fix.

But prison woes aren't limited to the state system. Twenty of California's 58 counties – including the largest ones with the bulk of the 80,000 inmates under county supervision – are being monitored by federal courts because of overcrowding.

Plainly, elected lawmakers at the county and state levels need to figure out a better approach. Our corrections system is broken.

Given this reality, the last thing California needs is a sweeping initiative amending the state constitution, handcuffing lawmakers and micromanaging the criminal justice system in a way that would ensure prison overcrowding would worsen – at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But that is just what awaits voters on Nov. 4 in the form of Proposition 9.

I'll be voting no on prop 9.