Opinion: Acts by Calif. politicians have backfired
By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee
Dan Walters
When Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled a criminal sentencing reform measure last month, he cited the “unintended consequences” of a law he had signed nearly 40 years earlier.
Brown said he didn’t foresee that the 1977 law, setting rigid sentences for felons, would remove “incentives for inmates to improve themselves” and discourage them from working toward earlier release through rehabilitation.
The “determinate sentence law” that Brown signed reflected the political angst that sharply rising crime rates were creating in the 1970s.
A thoughtful opinion piece by a thoughtful observer. I would add that unintended consequences to change are not restricted to government actions, but also occur frequently with decisions made by non-profits, businesses and private individuals. Forecasting unintended consequences is extremely difficult, and often impossible. It seems to me that rather than blaming decision-makers, it makes more sense to carefully track the results of changes in policy, which isn’t done nearly often enough to this day.