The latest polls show an overwhelming lead for Proposition 36, known as “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act.” It’s an effort by law enforcement and business owners to roll back reforms in a decade-old ballot initiative. 2014’s Proposition 47 reduced penalties for simple drug possession and lower-level theft – and redirected $1 billion in reduced incarceration costs to crime-prevention programs.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders fear that the Nov. 5 initiative will return the state to a previous time of over-incarceration and obliterate funding for local rehabilitation programs that have largely been working.
They have a point, although they have no one but themselves to blame for Prop. 36 and its popularity. It enjoys 71 percent support according to recent polls.
In opposing Proposition 36, this Editorial Board argued that critics of Prop. 47 have misrepresented the impact of the measure on the property crime wave. We argued that Prop. 36 will pack “our prisons with people for simple drug possession and dealing with homelessness by locking up those with drug problems or who commit low-level theft.”
The initiative includes some long-needed reforms, such as allowing felony prosecutions for thieves who repeatedly rob stores. But lawmakers could have legislatively dealt with those issues had they taken seriously the public’s legitimate concerns.
Instead, they waited too long to pass a package of anti-crime bills. They then added (and removed under pressure) a poison pill amendment that would have killed the laws if Prop. 36 passed.
Newsom also briefly tried to qualify a competing ballot measure but then abruptly changed his mind.
Basically, state leaders were more interested in playing politics than dealing with crime.
That’s too bad.
California voters have often been reasonable on the issue. During a crime wave in the 1990s, they passed tough-on-crime bills, but then voted for a series of reforms in the last decade or so as incarceration rates and costs soared.
Had Newsom and the Legislature acted responsibly they could have fixed the flaws in Prop. 47 and avoided this overly punitive measure. The likely result is entirely their fault.
Does this really surprise us? No. California’s Democratic politicians mismanage everything else in the state, from education to transportation to energy to the homelessness crisis.
It is no surprise they botched this, too.