By Pat Burns, President
Hopefully, you all read Dayna’s editorial last month. I thought that she did a great job and wanted to expand on it. I wanted to find out why our judicial system is the way that it is; in my opinion, it’s not good! So, I did some extra homework and learned some things that I felt like sharing.
California didn’t just suddenly have a broken criminal justice system; our elected leaders built it on purpose. Over the last decade or so, Sacramento politicians rewrote sentencing laws, shifted costs onto counties, and then erased the evidence. They called it reform. What taxpayers and victims received is not reform; it’s a system that spends freely, delivers little, and never holds anyone accountable. This is ongoing, and they aren’t stopping.
Judges still sentence criminals in open court, but California legislators ensured those sentences no longer mean what they say. Time served is shortened automatically. Records are later wiped clean. And when offenders return to the system, as many do, taxpayers are forced to fund the entire cycle again.
This isn’t an accident. It’s a spending choice.
The cost at the local level here in Sonoma County, every arrest carries a price tag long before anyone sets foot in a jail cell. Conservative estimates place the cost of a single arrest, patrol response, booking, transportation, and administrative processing at $1,500 to $2,000 per incident. That money is spent whether the offender faces consequences or not. Once incarcerated, Sonoma County taxpayers pay roughly $250 to $300 per inmate per day to house someone in the county jail. Staffing, healthcare, food service, facility operations, and legal liability all add up fast. These are real dollars, public dollars spent every day.
What have California politicians done with that money?
In 2011, the Legislature passed AB 109, shifting thousands of felony offenders from state prisons to county jails. Counties were promised funding and flexibility. What they got instead was overcrowding, early releases, and rising costs. County jails were never built for long-term incarceration, so sheriffs were given broad authority to release inmates early to manage space and budgets. Judges impose sentences. Counties are forced to reduce them because of overcrowding and lack of funding; they can’t conform to what Sacramento politicians have dreamed up.
Then came Proposition 47, which downgraded many theft and drug felonies to misdemeanors. The predictable result was not savings, but repetition. The same offenders were arrested again and again, and counties and taxpayers paid more.
Proposition 57 layered on additional sentence reductions by expanding “good behavior” and rehabilitation credits. Authority shifted further away from judges and victims and into the hands of administrators following state formulas. More spending, less certainty, fewer consequences.
At every step, legislators loosened accountability while continuing to spend freely, not their money, but ours.
Under California’s expanded “Clean Slate” laws, many offenders who complete probation or early-release supervision, supervision already shortened by legislative design, can now have their felony convictions dismissed, sealed, or hidden from public background checks. In many cases, this happens automatically, without a hearing and without input from victims.
Politicians frame this as compassion. Taxpayers should see it as record laundering.
The public paid for the arrest. The public paid for the prosecution. The public paid for incarceration. Victims paid in lost property, suffered trauma, and fear.
But after all that spending, Sacramento politicians decided the public no longer even deserved an honest accounting of what happened. Victims don’t get a “clean slate”. Taxpayers don’t get a refund. Only politicians get to claim success while the same offenders reenter the system, and the spending starts all over again.
When asked who is responsible, no one steps forward. Judges say they imposed the sentence. Sheriffs say they’re managing overcrowding. Legislators say voters approved reforms. Governors stay silent. Let me be clear, I am not laying blame on our Sheriff(s). I know that they are doing what they can, but they are continuously restrained by the hairbrained politicians who come up with this crap at our expense.
That’s not leadership. It’s deliberately designed to keep the spending flowing while no one owns the outcome.
California now spends billions statewide on a justice system that delivers less deterrence, more repeat crime, and growing public distrust. This isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s frivolous governance, spending taxpayer money without demanding results. It happens a lot, not just in the judicial system, as we all know.
California’s so-called leaders built a system that hides costs, erases failures, and guarantees taxpayers will keep paying indefinitely.
That isn’t reform. It’s a scam, and every Californian is footing the bill.
