California Democrats are continuing to resist the rollback of pro-criminal “reforms,” showing just how difficult it is to root out the racialized rot in the criminal justice system once it gets a foothold.

The California legislature has revived a bill that would help lessen sentences for people who have been in jail since 1990 or for at least 25 years, even if they were convicted of murder. As the logic goes, those people convicted of serious crimes that landed them sentences up to life without parole would have been given lighter sentences under the state’s new “reformed” system, so we need to start letting them out of jail as soon as possible.