Californians' Crime Concerns Put Pressure on Criminal Justice Reform and Progressive DAs

Ten years ago, Alley Bean joined 3.7 million Californians in voting for a measure that downgraded many nonviolent felony crimes to misdemeanors, such as petty shoplifting and drug use, hoping it would lead to a more equitable criminal justice system and help end mass incarceration.

Since then she has seen an increase in crime in her beloved Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, with some homes robbed in broad daylight. Meanwhile the sidewalks are occupied by tents of homeless people and dotted with people passed out from drugs. The opioid crisis touched her personally when she lost her 25-year-old granddaughter Zelly Rose to a fentanyl poisoning.

“I thought there was going to be rehabilitation” with criminal justice reform, said Bean, a lifelong Democrat. “I didn’t think there was going to be no consequences.”

A decade after Proposition 47 passed, Bean’s grievances are increasingly shared by Californians, with smash-and-grab store thefts captured on videos that go viral feeding a sense that the state has become lawless. And more and more, voters are pinning the blame for that on efforts to advance criminal justice reform, Proposition 47 and progressive district attorneys.

The issue has resulted in some tight races this year up and down the solidly blue state for Democratic and progressive members of Congress, mayors and district attorneys who are up for reelection. And a new statewide measure on the ballot, Proposition 36, would partly roll back the 2014 law.

The criminal justice reform, critics say, has been a failed social experiment.

Two years after San Francisco voters ousted one of the first reform-minded prosecutors elected to office, voters across the bay in Oakland will decide in November whether to recall another progressive district attorney.

To the south in Los Angeles, District Attorney George Gascón, who co-authored Proposition 47 and won in election 2020 after protests and racial reckoning following the police killing of George Floyd, faces stiff competition from a former federal prosecutor who calls himself a “hard middle” candidate.

“Mr. Gascón has been one of the greatest gifts for gangs,” Nathan Hochman said at their recent debate, lambasting him for not pursuing a gang sentencing enhancement in the high-profile killing of “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor.

Gascón defends his record, saying the use of gang enhancements is historically tinged with racial bias and a special committee makes decisions on them on a case-by-case basis. His office says it prosecuted over 100,000 “serious crimes” in the last four years, a rate comparable to the previous decade.

Gascón also has come under scrutiny for his office’s policy of not trying juveniles as adults, with critics pointing to cases of recidivism.

They include a man who at age 16 took part in a 2018 gas station robbery and was later released from a youth detention facility, only to be arrested and charged this April in connection with a homicide. Another, a 17-year-old gang member in 2019 who admitted to a double homicide and could have faced life in prison, was released last February and arrested months later in connection with a new killing.

Hochman, a former Republican running as an independent, has raised nearly $4 million for his campaign, compared with $678,000 for Gascón.

Frustration over retail theft has pushed Gov. Gavin Newsom to champion a slate of bills cracking down on serial offenders and auto thieves, but stopping short of making retail crimes felonies again.

Proposition 36 goes further: It would make theft of any amount a felony if a person already has two theft convictions, lengthen some theft and drug felony sentences, make fentanyl possession a felony and require people with multiple drug charges to complete treatment or else serve time.

Voters rejected a similar initiative in 2020, but this time around there is a bipartisan coalition backing Proposition 36. Over 180 Democratic elected officials, including 64 mayors, signed onto a campaign supporting the initiative last month.

The measure also is endorsed by the California Chamber of Commerce and major retailers such as Walmart, Target and Home Depot. A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found 71% of likely voters said they would vote yes.

“It’s hard for businesses and communities who are really on the front line of it,” said Jennifer Barrera, president of the California Chamber of Commerce. “I think that it will likely increase incarceration … but I do also hope and expect that it certainly will have an impact on reducing crime.”

Opponents of Prop 36, who include Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders, say it would take the state back to the policies of prosecuting a failed war on drugs and locking up tens of thousands of people, mostly Black and Hispanic, in overcrowded prisons.

The measure could increase California’s 90,000-strong prison population by a few thousand and would cost tens of millions of dollars annually at both the state and county level, according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report.

It also would reduce drug and mental health funding that comes from savings from incarcerating fewer people.

Twenty-two counties with no treatment beds would shoulder the financial burden under the measure, Newsom said. California is already thousands of beds short of being able to meet current demand.

“I know people are frustrated. I know people are angry. I am too,” the governor said at a recent news conference. “But this is not the way of solving it.”

There is insufficient data quantifying retail crime in California, but many point to major store closures and everyday products like toothpaste being locked behind plexiglass as evidence of a crisis.

A recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California found a 16% increase in commercial burglaries between 2019 and 2022. However, the research showed reduced enforcement for property and drug offenses during the COVID-19 pandemic had a much greater impact on crime than Proposition 47, and it also found no evidence that changes in drug arrests led to any increase in crime.

Salil Dudani, a senior attorney with the legal nonprofit Civil Rights Corp, said making misdemeanors felonies again will lead to more pre-trial jailing and in turn increase crime.

“It’s so destabilizing to a person’s life to pluck them out of their community … that they become more likely to commit crime,” Dudani said. “It undermines public safety to lock people up on low-level offenses, exactly like Prop 36 provides.”

That assertion is borne out by a 2017 Stanford Law Review study focusing on misdemeanors in Texas’ Harris County, which found that people jailed for even just a week were 32% more likely to commit a felony within 18 months.

But many business owners say the current situation is unsustainable.

Aaron Cardoza, who owns Mobil Fits, used to run an affordable clothing shop in a historically Black neighborhood of Del Paso Heights in Sacramento. He closed it down and switched to online sales out of a van after the store was broken into six times in two months.

“I lost a lot, a lot of merchandise,” Cardoza said, while the thieves got only a “slap on the wrist” and were released.

Cardoza said he supports Proposition 36.