It was a ballot proposition. That was the stated reasoning of its proponents but assigning motivation for why a referendum came out the way it did is a fools errand. The actual reasons why millions of people voted the way they did will invariably be multi-causal and include things no one in their right mind would consider condensed down to one “Yes” vote.

I remember that vote, and crowding in the prisons wasn’t even a consideration for how I voted because if we wanted to resolve that issue we would build more prisons; therefore it was a useless justification in either direction. In truth, the sum of our choices in California does not make it look like we care about crowding in the prisons, only that we care about looking like we care. It’s been more than 15 years since the first time I read an article about how our prisons are overcrowded, and they’re still overcrowded.