In the November election, voters approved Proposition 36, which toughened anti-crime laws by turning many drug and theft crimes into felonies. It turned back the sentencing reforms from 2014’s Proposition 47, which had become a lightning rod for criticism as California faced a retail-theft wave. Prop. 36 passed with 68% of the vote — and passed overwhelmingly in every one of the state’s 58 counties, including notoriously progressive San Francisco.
Who can blame voters?
They tired of having ordinary goods locked behind glass cabinets, open-air drug markets around homeless encampments and news about smash-and-grab robberies. The latter robberies already were felonies, but viral videos crystallized the public’s frustration.
Prop. 36 offered a rebuke to the governor and most lawmakers, who reacted far too late to legitimate public frustration.
This Editorial Board received flak for opposing Prop. 36. “Many of the provisions of this measure are sure to be popular or hard to vote against,” our editorial argued. “But a vote for the measure is also a vote for very antiquated ideas: packing 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.”
Early evidence is in and our fears were warranted. A report from the San Diego Union-Tribune found “drug crimes have made up the lion’s share of Proposition 36 cases in San Diego County — by a ratio of nearly three drug cases filed for every one retail theft.” Because the measure provides no new money for treatment, the law is sending more people to the jails and overwhelming court systems.
The report notes nearly all of the defendants in early Prop. 36 cases “had extensive criminal histories.” But getting the sentencing versus treatment balance right is tough. We agree that Prop. 47 needed to be supported with more consistent enforcement against theft and open-air drug markets , but Prop. 36 is heading too far the other way.
We’ll have to watch as data comes in from other counties, but we blame lawmakers for failing to act quickly against even the most obvious public disorder — and then leaving voters feeling as if they had little choice but to vent their frustration at the ballot box.
If California lawmakers can get their act together and invest in both crime prevention and drug addiction treatment, that would be a step forward. Absent that, we will gradually slide back into old-style drug war policies and approaches.