California voters were promised a solution. Proposition 36, passed with the appeal of getting “tough” on crime while claiming to offer support for addiction and mental health treatment, was supposed to be a measured response to public frustration over retail theft and the overdose crisis.
But only 100 days in, the cracks are already showing. A system once praised for beginning to reverse decades of mass incarceration is now steering back toward the punitive models of the past — and it’s doing so under the banner of reform.
Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, one of Prop. 36’s most vocal champions, recently boasted at a press event that “the rules of the game have changed for criminals — and they know it.”…