What factors contribute to delays in child protection from sex crimes in California?

For a state that wishes to be one of the nation’s agenda-setters and serve as a model for the country, California is woefully weak when it comes to protecting children from sex crimes.

GOP state Sen. Shannon Grove has introduced a bill that would make it a felony to purchase or solicit a child for sex. As you can assume based on that sentence, purchasing a child for sex in California is just a misdemeanor right now, with a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a fine of $10,000. Grove’s bill would make it a felony punishable by up to four years in prison and a $25,000 fine, and it would require offenders to register as sex offenders for 10 years.

Efforts to do this have failed in California since 2014, meaning that for the past decade, California has considered the possibility of upgrading purchasing a child for sex to a felony and chosen against it. Even now, Grove said she is getting pushback from state legislators who are worried about giving more prison time to people who are found guilty of purchasing a child for sex.

This is not some odd one-off, either. Last year, Grove spearheaded a push to make child sex trafficking a “serious felony” and create tougher criminal penalties for repeat offenders. After passing it through the state Senate with unanimous bipartisan support, multiple Assembly Democrats (including the wife of the state’s attorney general) tried to tank the bill. They only reversed course after the backlash was so severe that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) rushed in to make sure it got pushed through.

The issue remains the California Democratic Party’s obsession with “criminal justice reform” and decarceration. As Grove said, she is already seeing pushback because some California Democrats don’t want to give more prison time to anyone — even people who, cue emphasis, purchase children for sex. Last year’s nearly defeated effort to further punish child sex traffickers was justified in quickly deleted posts from Assembly Democrats that claimed it would be racist because they think anything that stiffens criminal penalties is racist.

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That is not a sustainable way to run a state, as evidenced by California’s out-of-control problems with retail crime. A society that is more worried about prison sentence statistics than whether dangerous people are being put behind bars is one that invites more crime and more brazen actions by criminals. That kind of society wastes its time debating whether child sex crimes should be felonies or slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanors. If that is the California model, then the country should continue to look elsewhere.