No on 6: No ballot-box budgeting for new criminal justice programs

This is wrong on so many counts.

Prop 6 is way too costly: Ballot-box budgeting is the reason California's budget is such a mess. This initiative would lock in specific funding amounts for specific programs (almost $1 billion a year and rising!), and then require that the funding levels go up every year. But there's no revenues identified. That will further cripple the state's ability to fund education, health care, and other vital services. See the LA Times editorial.

Prop 6 funds ineffective and unproven programs. For example, Prop 6 would give $100 million a year to a program the Legislative Analyst's Office recommended cutting because it has "no definable goals or performance objectives" (according to the San Jose Mercury News).

Prop 6 will waste people's lives (and taxpayer money) on failed criminal justice strategies. Mandatory sentences have filled California's prisons beyond the bursting point, despite the fact that we've built prisons like crazy. Prop 6 would fill them further. A federal court has already taken over the overburdened prison medical system.

Prop 6 is dangerous. It would change existing law so more children - as young as 14 years old - would be tried as adults and relegated to the criminal justice system. That's bad, since the NY Times tells us that "federally backed studies that show that making it easier to try juveniles as adults causes more crime, not less."

Lots of neighborhoods need help with crime. Prop 6 will not help.

Please vote No on 6. Learn more from the League of Women Voters or find out how you can help the No on 6 campaign.