When I was 12 years old, my sister, Polly Klaas, was kidnapped from our bedroom and murdered. In the aftermath, I watched lawmakers use grieving families — ours included — to sell the public on legislative policies that had already been written.

Polly’s name became synonymous with fear. And California’s Three Strikes law swept through the legislature.

Here’s what legislators weren’t doing: asking what would help us heal, what would make us feel safer, or what kind of system we actually wanted.

They were looking for pain they could weaponize. And it worked. Politicians simply assumed they knew what victims wanted, and they used our grief to push an agenda that had little to do with actual safety or healing.

I’ve spent years watching how survivor voices get co-opted — how our pain become

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