Commentary: Stop obstructing criminal justice reforms. It’s making us all less safe

In the 1980s and ‘90s, California embarked on a disastrous social experiment. Legislators embraced reactionary law-and-order policies that ratcheted up punishment in criminal cases. The negative impact of these policies overwhelmingly fell on poor, Black and brown communities. Sentence lengths and the corresponding cost to taxpayers skyrocketed, with California’s prison population ballooning from 23,000 in 1980 to more than 160,000 by 1999.

While the number of people behind bars has dropped since then, there are still more than 157,000 Californians under some