(The Center Square) – A new analysis has found California’s Proposition 47, which turned six drug and theft crimes into misdemeanors, has increased reoffending and levels of drug and theft crime. While the report did not analyze Prop. 36, a measure voters seem likely to approve in November that would strengthen prosecution and create a mental health or substance abuse treatment option, it noted the proposition could correct some of Prop. 47’s harms.
The paper from the Manhattan Institute, a right-of-center think tank, analyzed the effect of 2014’s Prop. 47, passed in part to reduce serious overcrowding in the state’s prisons, on prosecution of cases in Riverside County relating to offenses targeted by Prop. 47. The study found a notable increase in “trailing cases” — crimes committed while one was already being prosecuted, including a 633% increase in trailing misdemeanor cases as a portion of the total target cases.
The overcrowding that promoted the actions leading up to Prop. 47 was not trivial; By 2011, the state’s prisons — which were designed to house 85,000 inmates — had 156,000 inmates, leading to a court order to reduce the prison population to 137.5% of design capacity.
But rather than build more prisons, the state adopted a new policy sending many offenders to county jails and probation instead of prison, and amended the state’s three strikes law to reduce lifetime sentences.
“The cumulative result has been the release of many inmates—not for considerations of justice but merely due to facility limitations,” the paper’s author, Manhattan Institute Director of Policing and Public Safety Hannah Meyers noted.
Prop. 47 was created to use savings from decreases in the state prison population from the downgrading of theft and drug crimes with potential felony charges to misdemeanors to fund social services that reduce future crime.
“Individuals with a history of theft tend to pose more of a threat than those who commit theft once,” wrote Meyers. “But Prop 47 took away prosecutors’ ability to charge those repeat offenders with more serious felony crimes, instead treating all their crimes as misdemeanors, where the maximum sentence is 364 days in jail for some crimes, and only 180 days for theft.”
Meyers also found a 200% increase in Prop. 47 related cases where defendants were let out before their trials, failed to show up in court, and have had warrants out for their arrest since then. Now, over 25% of cases end up with a warrant open for 30 days or more, up from just over 15% before Prop. 47, which “gives defendants more time to commit new, trailing offenses while they are dodging court for earlier cases.”
Since Prop. 47, there also has been a 36% increase in crimes involving a victim. Felony convictions have declined by 18%, as would be expected by downgrading six crimes to misdemeanors, but serious felony convictions — those that count towards the state’s three-strikes law — have increased 20%, suggesting that serial criminals are emboldened to commit more serious crimes.
Meyers’ data also confirmed that Riverside law enforcement reduced arrests for Prop. 47 offenses by approximately 30%,
“With many arrestees more likely to end up offending again and within a shorter time frame, police become less motivated to make arrests,” wrote Meyers.
Meyers also found that the area had a 52.5% increase in overdose deaths between 2011 and 2015, but that with the % of those deaths from opioids declining from 50% in 2011 to 35% in 2015, opioids likely cannot be blamed for the increase. Meyers says Prop. 47 “took away much of the incentive for defendants with substance abuse issues to sign up for in-custody treatment programs” because “the incentive to participate in these supervised programs was the threat of harsher sentences.”
Meyers called for a return to pre-Prop. 47 charging powers for prosecutors and “expanding” jails and prisons to address “overcrowding.” Meyers also said Prop. 36, which would allow for serial thieves to be charged with felonies and create treatment-mandated crimes to get individuals mental health or substance abuse care, would only address “some of the mechanisms that Prop 47 harmfully altered.”
