House Bill 2712, the anti-gang legislation I wrote about here, passed the Senate on Friday, minus two key provisions. Gone are the controversial civil injunctions, which could have enabled city attorneys or prosecutors to prohibit gang members from associating with one another, even for lawful purposes. The injunctions were removed by Senator Margarita Prentice, who explained that she feared they would be used in a racially discriminatory manner.

More notably, the Ways and Means Committee removed the social “intervention” programs that were touted as essential by all of the bill’s supporters. A spokesperson for the Senate Democratic Caucus explained that the Ways and Means Committee didn’t want future legislatures to be bound by the $10 million earmark. This excuse seems strange insofar as, by the time the bill got to the Ways and Means Committee, the original earmark for intervention programs had been softened to an advisory statement (from “the sum of $10 million is appropriated” (pdf) to “it is the consensus that…should be appropriated” (pdf)), while real earmarks for the law enforcement end of the bill remained. The Committee managed to remove the dollar-specifics for law enforcement, but chucked the social programs baby with its earmark bathwater.

The bill now goes back to the House for concurrence and then on to the Governor for a signature.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Criminal Justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.