A push for a sentencing commission in California

As detailed by stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee, the debate over sentencing reform in California is about to get real interesting.  Here are some particulars from the LA Times:

Launching what promises to be one of the year’s fiercest debates in the Capitol, the Senate’s top Democrats on Thursday moved toward reforming California’s byzantine criminal sentencing system.  Unveiling legislation to create a sentencing review commission, Senate leader Don Perata of Oakland and Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles said California should join 16 other states now revisiting the question of who goes to prison and for how long.

The lawmakers also urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use his executive powers to create an interim working group that would begin collecting and analyzing sentencing data as early as February. “We can’t wait,” Romero said, noting that prison overcrowding is so severe that federal judges may impose a cap on the inmate population, now at 172,000. “Public safety is not served with a broken corrections system.”

Last month, Schwarzenegger proposed a sentencing commission of his own, part of a sweeping $10.9-billion prison building and reform plan.  The Republican governor did not specify what changes in penalties he favored but called for a 17-member panel that would suggest improvements to the Legislature.  Romero and Perata said that model lacked teeth and would doom any significant reform to failure.  The Democrats want the commission to have the power to tweak sentencing guidelines or create new ones and say its ideas should automatically take effect unless legislation is introduced to block it.

A spokesman for the governor had no specific comment on the proposal but said Schwarzenegger was “thrilled” that legislators shared his commitment to tackling the prison crisis.  Republican lawmakers were far from thrilled, arguing that the responsibility for setting or changing sentences for felons must remain squarely with the Legislature. Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange) said suggesting that lawmakers “punt to a commission that has no accountability is a nonstarter.” “They want to take the politics out of it,” said Spitzer, who was a prosecutor before becoming an elected official. “But in my opinion, the politics is critical to making sure a liberal Legislature does not become more soft on crime.”