2 months ago
6
CHOWCHILLA, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - The passing of Proposition 36 by California voters past year was welcomed successful Fresno County by District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp and Sheriff John Zanoni, with Smittcamp saying that it shows "the radical successful California are bushed of this chaos."
Proposition 36 accrued penalties for definite theft and cause crimes and was designed to reverse immoderate of the effects of Proposition 47. While supporters accidental it targets serial offenders, critics accidental it could bash much harm than good.
Executive Director with the Pollen Initiative Jesse Vasquez says Prop 36 could marque things worse. The Pollen Initiative is simply a nonprofit enactment dedicated to cultivating media centers wrong prisons nationwide truthful those down bars tin archer their stories.
Before Vasquez was Executive Director, helium says helium experienced incarceration astatine San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.
"I was formerly incarcerated from the property of 17 to 36," Vasquez said. "I got sentenced to a mates of beingness presumption for aggregate shootings, aggravated assault, attempted execution and immoderate gang-related activity."
While successful prison, Vasquez says penning became his coping mechanism, and journalism became an avenue for advocacy. Since Vasquez's merchandise successful 2019, helium has volunteered successful assorted precocious schools and continued his advocacy work. Vasquez besides helped motorboat a paper astatine the nation’s largest women’s rehabilitation center: the Central California Women's Facility successful Chowchilla.
He says 1 of the newspaper's goals is to undo the stigma surrounding incarcerated radical and marque a affirmative interaction connected authorities - specified arsenic Prop 36.
"An contented similar Prop 36 passes, it affects everybody. It doesn't conscionable people 1 demographic," Vasquez said.
Vasquez says voters person not considered what the result of their ballot mightiness mean for incarcerated radical due to the fact that they did not person each the facts available.
"[Voters] are conscionable reacting to what they spot successful the media, and a batch of it is fear-mongering," Vasquez said. "I deliberation erstwhile it came to Prop 36, they responded much connected what they saw successful the media alternatively than the existent facts."
Vasquez adds that without important efforts to rehabilitate radical successful prison, Prop 36 could enactment radical down bars with nary accidental for them to ever beryllium rehabilitated.
"I'm not a large instrumentality of similar locking them up and throwing distant the key," Vasquez said. "If you take Prop 57 retired of the representation and you summation the penalties similar Prop 36, you instrumentality distant each the discretion and each the powerfulness that the Department of Corrections had to incentivize rehabilitation."
According to Vasquez, without efforts to rehabilitate incarcerated people, inmates are doomed to enactment down bars.
Vasquez says that, done publications similar the CCWF's Paper Trail in-prison newspaper, helium hopes incarcerated radical volition publicise their ain stories and marque definite they are taken into information by lawmakers and the public.
"We nonstop it to the governor's office, each warden, everybody who works successful the department, and who is simply a stakeholder," Vasquez said. "We judge that informing them gives them astatine slightest the enactment to bash thing astir it."
Proposition 36 was passed by the voters of California successful the November 2024 election.
