Progressive politicians contend that mandatory-minimum prison sentences are unjust and lead to mass incarceration — until, that is, a judge grants a lenient sentence to someone convicted of a crime that they especially abhor. Then, they suddenly change their narrative.
Last week, the California state legislature passed Assembly Bill 2888. The measure mandates a minimum three-year prison sentence for those convicted of rape. It was inspired by the case of former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman after a fraternity party and received a mere six-month sentence behind bars — of which he served only three. Just one state legislator voted against the bill.
That legislator stuck to her guns. “We should not perpetuate practices that put an undue burden on minorities and economically disadvantaged communities like minimum mandatory sentences,” Democratic assembly member Cristina Garcia told National Review in a statement. “The limiting of judicial discretion falls primarily on minorities and the economically disadvantaged which are why the bill is opposed by the ACLU and why I voted no on this legislation.”
The California Democratic Party has in the past agreed with Garcia. They have thrown their support behind Proposition 57, an initiative on the ballot this November that would make it easier to parole more non-violent felons. “Non-violent” felonies, as defined by the law, include rape by intoxication, rape of an unconscious person, human trafficking, and the list goes on.
So where were Garcia’s fellow Democrats when Bill 2888 was making its way through the statehouse? Or are mandatory minimums only a problem when they are applied to crimes that Democrats particularly dislike? From the outside, it certainly seems so. Indeed, many of the same politicians who endorsed Prop 57 — a ballot initiative that would take felons convicted of rape out of jail earlier — put their names to Bill 2888, a bill that aims to put those same felons away for longer.
Turner’s short prison sentence deserved the national attention it got. But for the majority-Democrat legislature to propose as a solution the very measure that it has consistently fought against as the root of over-incarceration is preposterous.
