As a public defender in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, I represented countless clients battling substance use challenges. The typical response was to lock them up, even for simple possession, offering little to no access to treatment.
A decade later, as a prosecutor in San Francisco, I worked to get more people into treatment instead but all too often, they were forced to wait for months for a treatment bed or the treatment provided was inadequate for their needs. Unsurprisingly, too many individuals ended up trapped in a revolving door of relapses, arrests, and incarceration.
It was clear to me then that jail and prison cannot solve addiction and that we need to invest in and expand access to treatment. Yet, in 2024, Proposition 36’s supporters are still pushing the same failed approach: more jail, more prison, and no real solutions.
Prop. 36 is billed by proponents as a mass treatment initiative. Yet, it doesn’t provide a cent of funding for treatment. In fact, it will put more people in prison and gut existing treatment resources, leaving Californians with fewer options and less access to help.
Prop. 36 will create a new felony charge for possessing any amount of drugs if someone has two or more prior convictions for drug crimes. Proponents want you to think that the threat of a felony is a carrot-and-stick approach that will force more people into treatment. But there aren’t enough treatment programs available right now, even for people eager to participate.
More than 80 percent of the 6.3 million Californians needing substance use treatment in 2022 didn’t get it. A state report found that 70 percent of California’s 58 counties urgently needed residential treatment services at all levels of care, while 22 counties reported having no residential treatment facilities at all – a problem that will only be made worse by Prop. 36.
So what happens if someone is arrested on a “treatment-mandated felony” under Prop. 36 but no treatment beds are available? They could be forced to wait months, maybe years, to get into a treatment program. They might be held in jail or they might find that a prison sentence is a quicker resolution to their case.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates Prop. 36 will increase the state prison population by at least several thousand people each year. Even if you take the most conservative estimate – 2,000 individuals serving a minimum 16-month felony sentence – that’s $354 million dollars in prison costs alone.
These increased prison costs will force massive cuts to some of California’s most successful treatment, crime prevention, and victim services programs. In the past decade, nearly $1 billion has been invested in community-based programs directly because of savings from Proposition 47. When Prop. 36 inevitably lands more people in prison, this funding will be slashed and programs will be forced to cut services to increase spending on incarceration.
In Los Angeles, for example, $59 million from Prop 47 savings has served more than 7,000 people through a reentry program that connects individuals with community health workers and helps them access resources like drug treatment. Program participants were 41% less likely to be arrested in the two years after enrollment than a comparable group of non-participants.
We need to invest more in the programs that work, but if Prop. 36 is passed, the funding for these programs will dry up. We will all be less safe as a result, and our most vulnerable communities will be hit the hardest.
Proponents of Prop. 36 don’t want you to know that their initiative will unravel the massive Prop 47 savings that have been invested in our communities. Nor do they want you to know that instead of demonizing Prop 47 for the past decade, they could have adapted to the law to get more people into treatment through drug courts.
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A frequent talking point from Prop. 36 supporters is that participation in drug courts has been down in the 10 years since Prop. 47 went into effect, as many drug courts were set up to take on simple possession felony charges that are now misdemeanors. But we didn’t need a new ballot initiative to get more people into drug courts. After Prop. 47 became law, some drug courts statewide expanded their eligibility to include misdemeanor offenses or more serious felony charges. Many of these courts saw an increase in drug court participation. But nearly a third of courts made no changes at all to eligibility.
If the proponents of Prop. 36 truly cared about expanding access to treatment, then a more direct route would be a ballot initiative to fund and expand treatment options across California. Instead, they’ve put in front of the voters a bill that funnels money into prisons while gutting successful community-based programs. And they’ve spent millions of dollars to convince us it does the opposite.
Prop. 36 is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It suggests people should receive treatment at the same time it pulls the funding away from treatment to spend it on prisons. Vote no on Prop. 36 and let’s work together on real solutions that will finally get people the help they need and make our communities safer.
Cristine Soto DeBerry is the executive director of Prosecutors Alliance Action.