Advocating a sentencing commission for California

The Sacramento Bee has these two new pieces that both make an effective pitch for California to create a sentencing commission to help deal with all its sentencing and prison woes:

• Claire Cooper’s op-ed here is entitled, “Serving up justice: Wrestling with a bulging prison population, California should learn from other states about sentencing reform.”

• The paper’s editorial here is simply entitled, “Prison reform, for real.”

In related news, this newspaper article reports that a new poll shows that Californians support new prison construction to cope with overcrowding issues:

In a reversal, a poll shows Californians now overwhelmingly view prison crowding as a crisis big enough to justify the state’s new multibillion-dollar construction program — a reflection of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sway over public opinion.  Before the governor’s push for prison spending, the public historically had “not placed a high priority” on prison woes, said Mark Baldassare, director of the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California.

An institute survey released Thursday also reaffirms that the public believes, more than ever, state prisons exist mostly to protect Californians and punish criminals — not rehabilitate.  Liberal Democratic lawmakers and prison-reform advocacy groups said the attitude won’t help as they try to push the state toward stronger rehabilitation measures and major changes in parole and sentencing laws.

The survey discussed in this article is available at this link.