Crime has been a see-saw issue in California for most of the last 40 years. Leniency was in vogue for a while recently, but now the balance is back to getting tougher, as polls this fall showed many voters believed property crimes have vastly increased since the 2014 passage of Proposition 47.
The clearest manifestation of this was the strong performance of Prop. 36 on this month’s ballot, drawing a huge, nearly 70% majority.
There was also the recall of Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and the easy defeat of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who fell to Republican-turned-independent Nathan Hochman. If Hochman ever reverts to the GOP, he would become the highest-ranking Republican officeholder in California.
The last time Californians made life significantly more difficult for criminals came in 1994, when the so-called “three strikes and you’re out” measure passed easily. That result was in part a reaction to the brutal murders of Kimber Reynolds and Polly Klaas in 1992 and 1993.
Polly Klaas and two fellow 12-year-olds were enjoying a slumber party in Petaluma when Richard Allen Davis abducted and murdered her. Her body was discovered about two months later in 1993. Kimber Reynolds, 18, had been shot and killed in Fresno the previous year.
Only 13 months after Polly’s abduction, voters passed the three-strikes law, which imposed increasingly tough sentences on any criminal’s first, second and third felonies, with an automatic 25 years to life for the third. Polly’s murderer, convicted in 1996 after a long trial, remains on San Quentin’s death row today.
In 2012, though, voters decided the three-strikes law was a bit much and passed a Prop. 36 very different from this month’s. It eased sentences for third-strike offenses that were neither violent nor legally designated as serious crimes. Within eight months, 1,000 third-strikers had been freed, with a recidivism rate under 2%, far below the overall average for released convicts.
This was a major step toward 2014’s Prop. 47, portrayed as the villain in this year’s campaign for the confusingly numbered most recent Prop. 36. Because of the wide belief that Prop. 47 increased crime rates, especially for property crimes, voters strongly favored the new Prop. 36 from the moment sponsoring prosecutors announced it.
Prop. 47 did reach at least one of its goals: reducing incarceration significantly by reclassifying many drug- and theft-related crimes as misdemeanors, downgraded from felonies that carry more serious penalties. It set the minimum value for a theft to become a felony at $950 per crime.
One result was that felony prosecutions for theft dropped to 7% of their previous levels within eight years. At the same time, say the latest state statistics, the property crime rate dropped slightly (1.8%) between 2018 and 2023. Many take those numbers to mean the number of thefts may have fallen slightly but that the value of what was taken rose greatly.
So now comes the new Prop. 36, which allows aggregation of the value of thefts by repeat offenders. That figures to shoot up the prosecution rate for property crimes and raise prison populations, all part of California’s crime seesaw.
Seeking to keep prison populations — and budgets — down, Gov. Gavin Newsom spurred the state Legislature to pass several measures in August that accomplish much of what Prop. 36 sought. Howeve, that was not enough for voters, who clearly want stricter treatment for criminals like those behind the “smash-and-grab” burglaries with well-organized groups of marauders breaking store windows and taking expensive merchandise that often later turns up for sale online.
As usual, Republicans tried this fall to tar Democrats as “soft on crime,” even as they were passing their get-tough package of new laws, some of which will now be superceded by Prop. 36, which takes precedence wherever it conflicts with existing laws because it was a voter-backed initiative.
As for L.A.’s Gascon, he never had a prayer of reelection this fall after getting only one-fourth of the vote in the March primary election. His often-controversial moves drew eight primary opponents and enmity from the potent local Association of Deputy District Attorneys.
So the pendulum has swung back to the tough-on-crime side, but it’s anyone’s guess when it may again move back the other way.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.