Berryhill On Assembly’s Prison Reform Legislation

Sacramento, CA — 25th District Assemblyman Tom Berryhill chastised the Democrats prior to a Monday afternoon vote that eventually passed prison reform legislation.

Berryhill was one of many speakers prior to the 41-35 vote that followed up the Senate’s 21-19 vote on a similar package August 20.

He told his peers on the other side of the aisle, “41 of you guys are going to vote for this thing and when you let out these prisoners or whether you force our local governments to do it, this is an early release program no matter how you look at it. You can’t spin this thing pretty and in one of your districts at some point in time somebody is going to get hurt and as all of you folks run for office or whatever you do, when somebody gets hurt that blood will be on your hands.

This is a public safety nightmare for the state of California. There will be early release and even the Speaker (Democrat Karen Bass) said there are going to be 30,000 inmates let out. This bill was way better. There were a lot of public safety folks that reluctantly went neutral because politically they felt they had to but they also told us that they really don’t care if this thing dies because it’s really a bad bill.”

Berryhill added that there has been no “early release program” for school kids so education simply reduces its spending in the areas of administration and programs so why doesn’t the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation do the same.

Berryhill says the Assembly and the Senate may negotiate a settlement but he thinks the Senate may drop the issue simply because of its controversial nature.

Written by bill.johnson@mlode.com