Last Friday, California governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 2888, which mandates a minimum three-year prison sentence for those convicted of rape. The bill was inspired by the case of former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, who received a six-month sentence behind bars after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.
Brown and the state’s majority-Democratic legislature previously have sought to remove mandatory minimums in the state’s criminal justice system; they argue that one-size-fits-all sentencing leads to mass-incarceration and disproportionately targets minorities. But after Turner’s case, these same politicians have now signed into law more mandatory minimums as their best solution.
As I wrote for National Review Online earlier this month:
Democrats in California have been relentless in their fight to remove mandatory-minimum sentencing across the criminal-justice system. Now, however, they are championing mandatory-minimum sentencing as a panacea. Why? Because they want to be seen as taking action on this cause. Whatever else it professes to do, Bill 2888 does nothing better than to reveal California’s progressive politicians for the directionless hypocrites they are.
In Brown’s signing message for Assembly Bill 2888, he admitted that “as a general matter,” he is “opposed to adding more mandatory minimum sentencing.” Yet, he still made the decision to sign the bill into law. “I believe it brings a measure of parity to sentencing for criminal acts that are substantially similar,” he explained.
The new law will go into effect January 1, 2017.