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"My mom asked me if I have positions on all of them, and I told her I'm still working on it," said Assembly Public Safety Committee chairman Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana, who presided over nine hours of hearings on the measures. "There's a lot to digest."

On Nov. 4, voters will decide whether to drastically change the way the state prosecutes drug addicts and the lower-level property crimes they commit, to the tune of diverting an estimated 18,000 offenders from prison into treatment programs. That's the basic thrust of Proposition 5.

They're also being asked to give local law enforcement more money, protect what funds they already get, and toughen laws aimed at street gang members, methamphetamine cookers and serious ex-cons who possess guns in public. Those are the basics of Proposition 6.

The third measure seeks to put victims at or near the center of the entire criminal justice process and give them a constitutional right to participate in plea bargaining and parole decisions. It also wants to make life-term inmates wait 15 years between parole hearings, stop early inmate releases and have counties build tent jails to handle inmate overflow. That's Proposition 9.

"The skies are getting crowded," UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring said of the air traffic over the criminal justice system. "It's become a two-sided process, with the left using it as well as the right."

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, whose office opposes Propositions 5 and 9 and has deep reservations about Proposition 6, said the ballot campaigns represent criminal justice policy-making at its worst.

"It only takes $2 million or $3 million to put any nice-sounding piece of junk into the constitution," Cooley said.

Big money is behind all three initiatives.

Billionaire financier George Soros contributed $1.4 million and three other out-of-state businessmen put in $2.6 million for Proposition 5. Soros and friends financed the Proposition 36 drug treatment initiative to victory in 2000.

Orange County high-tech tycoon Henry T. Nicholas III – now fighting a federal stock fraud, drug and prostitution indictment – gave $5.85 million to Propositions 6 and 9. His cash helped kill a ballot measure to overturn key provisions of California's "three-strikes" law in 2004.

At Solorio's hearings last month, police management and labor groups, prosecutors (minus Cooley) and crime victims led the fight for 6 and 9. Their opponents included criminal defense lawyers, teachers unions and civil rights activits. Proposition 5 had Soros' National Drug Policy Alliance, public defenders and drug treatment providers lined up against police and prosecutors (this time, with Cooley on their side).

The initiatives have reached the ballot as crime in California has descended to its lowest level in decades. Last year, violent crime, including the murder rate, had dropped to less than half its 1992 level. Property crime fell 44 percent in the same 15-year period.

Meanwhile, the state's prison population has more or less stabilized at just above the 170,000 mark. The system now houses a rising number of violent felons (52 percent, compared with 45 percent eight years ago) and a lower rate of drug offenders (20 percent, compared with 28 percent in 2000), according to California corrections statistics.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers also have prodded prison officials last year to do a better job of rehabilitating offenders. Their Assembly Bill 900 plan last year allocated billions in bond money to build more prison space tied to improved rehab programs. Partisan politics since have snagged its but prison officials still think the AB 900 plan will work.

Competing sides in the debate about California crime mostly see problems that only their measures can fix.

Proposition 5 supporters cite prisons crammed to twice their designed capacity, rising corrections budgets that now make up 10 percent of state general fund spending and nation-worst 70 percent recidivism rates.

Advocates for Propositions 6 and 9 worry about 420,000 street gang members in the state and constitutional protections that favor perpetrators more than their prey.

Emotions are running high.

At Solorio's hearings, Oakland attorney Keith Wattley, an opponent of the victims' rights measure, called Proposition 9 a "revenge initiative."

The statement outraged the measure's supporters.

"This is not a revenge initiative at all," said Harriet Salarno, president of Crime Victims United of California. "All we're asking for is the same rights. They (the convicted) have that right in the constitution. Why can't we have that right? Equal justice, that's as simple as it could be."

L.A.'s Cooley said Proposition 5, the drug initiative, was "vague" and filled with 60 pages of "minutiae that is incomprehensible."

Initiative spokesman Daniel Abrahamson said Proposition 5 needs to be long and complicated to "unravel" the state's heavy-handed approach to criminal justice.

"It's a complicated mess that requires nuanced responses," Abrahamson said.

Opponents of Proposition 6 questioned why the state needs it when crime has plummeted, but the initiative's point man, state Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, disregarded the overall statistics.

"Just listen to the victims," he said, referring to parents of murdered children who testified at the hearing. "Tell the victim, tell the mother of a child that's been shot, that crime's down."

In an interview after the nine hours of hearings, Solorio described the measures as containing "a kitchen sink of policy ideas and new programs that cost the taxpayer money."

He said there has to be a better way to set criminal justice policy.

"If there's a way to simplify them, that might be a good idea," Solorio said of the initiatives. "I hope the voters figure out what they all mean."
http://www.sacbee.com/111/v-print/story/1290837.html