Jeff Adachi, a public defender in San Francisco, criticizes the new prison reform bill SB40. He figures it is going to increase the prison population and cost of running prisons. Professor Jeffrey Fisher adds another reason why this bill may cause problems:

In addition, there is a risk that SB40 will be found unconstitutional. According to Stanford constitutional-law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher, SB40's solution works only when judges are given a wide sentencing range, which is not true of California's current scheme. That could require hundreds of cases to be retried.