Abstract
No one in California government today ensures that our state’s crime and punishment policies are tied to the severity of crimes committed. There is literally no one overseeing the collection of statewide judicial sentencing data or coordinating the state’s public safety priorities across the three branches of government.
Instead, sentencing policy in California is done on the fly. Legislators with no background in sentencing policy are asked to vote on laws without knowing anything about how those laws will affect our prison populations or the safety of our communities.