District Attorney Jason Anderson joined Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and 43 other elected District Attorneys across California, filing a civil lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prohibit awarding additional conduct credits to more than 76,000 violent and serious offenders.
The suit seeks to stop the unaccountable bureaucrats in Sacramento from avoiding the democratic process of public comment on the early release of the worst of the worst inmates in California prisons. The bureaucrats know the public will not support such a move. It took the majority of California Elected District Attorneys to expose their deception.
The additional credits were the product of “emergency” regulations which were passed and first made public on Friday April 30, 2021, at 3:00 p.m. In adopting these regulations, and claiming an emergency, the CDCR Secretary stated these regulations were necessary to comply with “the direction outlined in the Governor’s Budget Summary” presented a year ago on May 14, 2020. By invoking an emergency, the traditional regulatory scheme and transparent public comment period was bypassed.
Anderson remarked, “If the rule of law means anything, it means everyone has to abide by it including the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. This lawsuit asks the court to enjoin CDCR from awarding these credits unless and until these regulations are exposed to a fair, honest and transparent debate, where the public has input on dramatic changes made through the regulatory process.”