LOS ANGELES—This November Californians will vote on a bill that would extend “three-strikes” style sentencing to include low-level nonviolent drug and theft offenses.
According to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Proposition 36 would allow felony charges and increase sentences for crimes in three ways:
By turning some misdemeanors into felonies, such as theft of items worth $950 or less and making that a felony if the person has two or more past convictions for certain theft crimes (such as shoplifting, burglary, or carjacking), and increase the sentence up to three years in county jail or state prison.
These changes would undo some of the punishment reductions in Proposition 47, which passed in 2014, analysts noted. Proposition 47 changed some theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, such as shoplifting items worth $950 or less from a store and drug possession generally became misdemeanors.
In addition, Prop. 36 would also create a new treatment-focused court process for some drug possession crimes and require courts to warn people convicted of selling or providing illegal drugs to others that they can be charged with murder if they keep doing so and someone dies.
“Right-wing and tough-on-crime actors have been engaging in an intensified fear-mongering campaign over a completely fabricated spike in retail theft, which Proposition 36 is the latest example of in California,”
Stated Mohamed Shehk, National Campaigns Director for Critical Resistance, an Oakland-based national prison reform organization that works against prison expansion.
He argued that by every statistical analysis, crime rates continue to be at historic lows, yet there are calls for more policing and more imprisonment.
“The expansion of these systems will do nothing but result in more racist and systemic violence, destabilization, and repression against communities that have long been disproportionately targeted—Black, Indigenous, people of color, immigrant, and working-class communities,” Mr. Shehk told The Final Call.
Black men comprise about 13 percent of the U.S. male population, but 35 percent of the incarcerated, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a national organization that works to end the over-criminalization and mass incarceration of Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty.
Also, more than 80 percent of all arrests are for low-level, nonviolent offenses and conduct related to poverty, the organization indicates.
Vera argues that Prop. 36 would strip approximately $100 million annually in funding for drug treatment, housing, and school-based programs—the very things proven to prevent crime in the first place—as well as services for survivors of crime.
Because more Californians would languish in jail and prison on low-level offenses, Prop. 36 would cost taxpayers an additional $5 billion a year on top of the $27 billion spent annually for jails, prisons, and courts across the state, according to Vera’s “No on Prop. 36: Keep California’s Communities Safe and Stable” information sheet dated September 19.
According to the California Budget and Policy Center, the $950 standard for shoplifting created by Proposition 47 is one of the toughest in the country.
For example, in Texas, a felony charge isn’t triggered until the value of stolen goods reaches $2,500—much higher than in California, noted an online article the center published in April of this year.
Shoplifting remains well below pre-pandemic levels despite a recent rise, the article continued, indicating that the shoplifting rate—the number of shoplifting crimes per 100,000 Californians—was 210 in 2022, the most recent statewide data available.
This is down by 17 percent from 2014, the year that Prop. 47 took effect, according to the research and analysis by the California Budget and Policy Center, a nonprofit, that advances public policies that expand opportunities and promote well-being for Californians.
“Policymaking should be based on facts and evidence, not false perceptions or political motivations. Proposals to increase penalties for shoplifting fail this test,” wrote Scott Graves, the center’s budget director, in his online article.
Ansar S. Muhammad, Antelope Valley Student Study Group Coordinator for the Nation of Islam, feels that Prop. 36 is just another tool and wicked tactic being used to incarcerate already marginalized Black and Indigenous people.
For example, when employment opportunities are limited and the educational system has and is failing, it creates an environment that will produce crime and the school to prison pipeline, he stated.
“When we look at who is being convicted in the State of California, it’s Black and Brown youth and young adults. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has made it very clear that there is a war being played out on two fronts; one of those fronts is against us here in the United States of America,” Student Minister Muhammad told The Final Call.
“Our state representatives should spend more time on funding community-based services using our tax dollars, that will assist the local residents on job creation and training programs that could be a pathway to financial stability, which will reduce the desire to commit crime in the inner cities of America,” he added.
Supporters of the bill, including Californians for Safer Communities, say the Golden State is suffering from a continued explosion in theft and trafficking of deadly hard drugs like fentanyl, often because the people committing these crimes do not face serious consequences.
Proponents say it would increase penalties for smash-and-grab crimes and create tougher penalties and better accountability for repeat retail theft offenders. And, it would allow for stolen property values from multiple thefts to be combined, countering tactics by career thieves who steal repeatedly to avoid harsher penalties.
In addition, Prop. 36 confronts the fentanyl crisis in California’s communities and incentivizes drug and mental health treatment, they continued.
However, argued Vera, big corporations, the prison lobby, and right-wing interests are funding Prop. 36, described as “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act,” but none of its provisions directly address homelessness.
In addition, Vera continued, Prop. 36 would allow judges to punish someone who commits any of a wide range of misdemeanor and felony theft offenses with a felony (up to three years in state prison and other civil rights consequences) if they have two or more prior convictions for a theft-related offense.
Also, prosecutors or probation officers could refer people convicted for diversion (alternatives to arrest, prosecution and incarceration), but only if counties have theft diversion programs in place (which many counties, for example Los Angeles County, do not.
Over the last 40 years, California has built approximately 23 prisons and four universities, stated Yoel Haile, Criminal Justice Program Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
This shows just how much attention, time, and money was focused on prisons, which has led to the overpopulation of prisons in the early 1990s and 2000s, he stated, during its Sept. 13 “Stop Prop. 36” webinar.
“What we’re really at its bare bones seeing is class warfare,” said Mr. Haile.
