Under pressure from the courts to reduce his state’s prison population, California Gov. Jerry Brown has thrown his support behind a plan that’s likely to slash the number of teens who get prosecuted as adults.
If approved by voters, the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 would block district attorneys from charging a suspect under 18 as an adult. Instead, a judge would decide whether teens accused of a violent crime should stand trial as an adult.
Those measures are part of a bigger ballot initiative to reduce California’s prison population, which now tops 127,000. The state is under a court order capping that population, which includes more than 5,000 prisoners held in other states.
[For more of this story, written by Matt Smith, go to http://jjie.org/california-gov...w-initiative/181513/]
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