The real-life story of JosÉ Osuna -- like the character Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s novel Les MisÉrables -- gives credence to the idea that a second chance is sometimes all you need to turn your life around.
A second chance is essentially what California’s Proposition 47, if approved by voters, would provide. The law would reduce prison terms for offenders like Osuna who were given long sentences for minor and non-violent offenses. The law would also reclassify many non-violent felonies, such as drug possession, as misdemeanors.
According to the most recent California Department of Corrections report, there are roughly 133,000 inmates incarcerated in California state prisons on any given day. If Proposition 47 passes, about one in five of those inmates could have their prison sentences reduced retroactively, resulting in early releases.
“At 17, I was arrested for a drug offense," said Osuna, 45, who was a drug user and gang member before he reached 13. "When I was convicted, the judge sentenced me to a California state prison for five years." Those years, he said, transformed him into something he never set out to be: a criminal. When he was released in his early 20s, he rejoined a gang and spent 13 of the next 17 years in and out of 12 different state prisons.
Stories like Osuna’s are commonplace in California, where the prison population has grown in recent decades to accommodate non-violent offenders swept up in the net of the federal War on Drugs and the state’s Three Strikes Law. Passed in 1994, that law imposed mandatory life sentences on anyone convicted of a third felony, regardless of whether that felony was violent or deemed serious in nature – something as minor as possession of an ounce of marijuana or stealing a hubcap would result in time served.
[For more of this story, written by Julian Do, go to http://newamericamedia.org/2014/10/faith-leaders-unite-to-support-prop-47-help-california-families.php]
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