Sacramento's first crack at prison reform was a bipartisan effort to turn prisoners loose into California communities to hit phony budget accounting targets. The claim that pushing 15 percent of the state prison population out the door early would have had no effect on public safety is only the latest lunacy to emerge from our broken political system.

My opposition to this, including an online action drive, and outcry from law enforcement associations and the public helped block the worst aspects of the plan. What we really need is a major set of prison and criminal justice reforms that are well considered and well planned out.

Overall, we need to rethink the way we handle incarcerations, criminal justice, and safety. Prison and sentencing reform have many complex elements that get lost in the posturing that is inevitable in a budget debate. In the short term, I would like to see sentencing reform that empowers judges to make reasonable accommodations in individual cases and requires the legislature to take responsibility for appropriate sentencing levels based on expert input, including the removal of mandatory minimums in some cases.

I believe deeply that we need early intervention and drug courts for those offenders who are only beginning along a criminal road, before they're too far along that dangerous path. I support the active deployment of technology such as GPS monitoring where appropriate to avoid the costs of incarceration while gaining some leverage over truly low-risk offenders who might be turned away from a criminal career.

Releasing convicted felons onto California streets isn't the answer to the frustration many feel at a growing prison population - we need a systemic approach that reduces the prison population by deterring crime and diverting those who would otherwise move down that path into more productive pursuits. We need to remain ready to incarcerate those who need to be separated from mainstream society in order to protect law-abiding citizens. Accounting gimmicks driven by prison population numbers are not part of a real reform agenda.