While California’s property and violent crime rates are relatively low measured over a 60-year time frame, they have gone up significantly since the beginning of the pandemic. The public is understandably concerned – and politicians are rushing to address them. The key now is to take a balanced approach rather than just another wild pendulum swing.
Following a crime wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s, California politicians and voters passed myriad tough-on-crime laws. Crime rates hit historic lows before the pandemic-era spikes, but incarceration rates soared. That led lawmakers to embrace criminal-justice reforms that reduced sentences. Just as voters in the 1990s approved tough new laws, voters in the 2010s approved softer ones.
And now the state is looking at toughing its crime laws, driven by high-profile smash-and-grab robberies. The tough-on-crime crowd has Proposition 47 in its sights – the 2014 initiative that reduced some relatively minor felonies to misdemeanors and raised the threshold for a felony charge from $400 to $950. The higher number reflects inflation and remains lower than in most other states.
Critics blame the initiative for the wave of retail thefts and even for hikes in violent crime, even though the former clearly remain felonies and the initiative has nothing to do with the latter. Voters soundly rejected a 2020 initiative that would have made far-reaching changes to Proposition 47. This Editorial Board called Proposition 20 an overreaction and argued that these issues demand “a more deliberative and thoughtful approach.”
As we enter another election season, we’re seeing new efforts to deal with crime – and it appears that at least some of the efforts to deal with crime problems are more deliberative and thoughtful than in the recent past. Prop. 47 still has a growing list of vocal opponents, but their initiative drive for the November ballot, called the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, is more restrained than the 2020 attempt. We’ll look closely at it as the general election approaches.
And in a likely effort to derail legislative calls to revisit Proposition 47, Democratic leaders in the Assembly last week announced what they tout as a groundbreaking effort to rein in the property crime epidemic. Called the California Retail Theft Reduction Act, the proposal is a mixed bag, but stakes out a sensible middle-of-the-road position.
For instance, we agree with its goal of “aggregation.” That enables law enforcement to charge shoplifters with a felony if they make multiple thefts in a day at various stores. The bill would let prosecutors aggregate the multiple thefts rather than applying each one to the $950 limit. That addresses the major concern about Proposition 47 and targets criminal enterprises.
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We also appreciate the act’s effort to divert some shoplifters from jail by, in certain cases, referring them to rehabilitation programs. We’re not happy with the requirement that online sellers maintain extensive paperwork to prove that they obtained their goods legally. That imposes an unreasonably large burden on law-abiding citizens.
Overall this is the right approach, as it targets an apparent Proposition 47 loophole without gutting a reform that has many laudable features. It’s hard to strike the right balance, but this bill at least attempts to do.