California police launch stings and arrests under new tough-on-crime measure

Law enforcement agencies across California are touting mass arrests and prosecutions for drug charges and thefts following the passage of a tough-on-crime ballot measure that increases incarceration for some non-violent offenses.

After decades of reforms to reduce prison overcrowding and prioritize alternatives to incarceration for minor crimes, California voters in November opted to change course. Proposition 36, passed by overwhelming margins, turns some misdemeanor shoplifting and drug-possession cases into felonies that carry prison time and lengthens sentencing for selling drugs and certain property offenses.

After the law went into effect on 18 December, undercover deputies in Sacramento arrested dozens of people for shoplifting while a local news station filmed, with a detective saying officers were “feeling empowered”. In nearby Folsom, police released body-camera footage of multiple officers tackling and arresting a man accused of stealing alcohol from Target. In Redding, a woman was jailed for smoking fentanyl and shoplifting in a “Proposition 36 sting”, with police blasting mugshots on Facebook.

Officials in San Francisco, Yolo, Solano, San Bernardino and Kern counties have made similar announcements. Fresno’s district attorney warned potential targets, including “serial drug users”: “We’re coming for you.”

Prop 36 was promoted by retail corporations and law enforcement, who argued it was urgently needed to curb store thefts, property crime and open-air drug use. It also found support among some prominent Democratic city leaders, including then San Francisco mayor London Breed and San Jose mayor Matt Mahan. But it was fiercely opposed by civil rights groups, who warned the return to punitive “war on drugs” approaches would expand the state’s jails and prisons, at great financial cost, without helping people in need.

Jawad Ursani, owner of a 7-Eleven, presents a $1m check for Yes on Prop 36, in Los Angeles on 10 October 2024. Photograph: Damian Dovarganes/AP

The new law allows district attorneys to prosecute shoplifting and other thefts as felonies if a defendant has two convictions on their record, a change that supporters say will reduce crime by punishing repeat offenders.

Prop 36 also allows authorities to charge drug possession as a “treatment-mandated felony” if a defendant has two prior convictions, meaning a defendant who pleads guilty could enter treatment and, if they complete a program, avoid prison time and have the case expunged. If they don’t finish, they could face three years in prison. Backers argue this will help tackle California’s enduring problems of homelessness, addiction and mental illness increasingly visible on the streets.

Experts have raised alarm, however, about the lack of investment in treatment programs, as well as the efficacy of forced treatment as a way to help people fight addiction.

The “elephant in the room” is the lack of funding attached to Proposition 36, said Steve Jackson, the San Joaquin county probation department chief. With no funds to invest in new treatment programs, cash-strapped counties will be left scrambling to address the costs of funneling more people through the system and providing treatment to those mandated to receive it, he said.

“You don’t want people in custody waiting for treatment,” said Jackson, who is president of the Chief Probation Officers of California, which backed Prop 36.

“We’re going to see more people sitting in jails or prisons for a very long time,” said Tinisch Hollins, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, an advocacy group that opposed Prop 36. “There’s a perception that people automatically have access to all these programs to rehabilitate when they go to jail or prison … but we haven’t invested in the systems and infrastructure that we need to actually help people.”

‘People are worse off’

Legislative analysts have projected that Prop 36 could see thousands more people incarcerated. Advocates fear this will worsen social crises in the state in the long run, and increase annual criminal legal system costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. The state spends on average $133,000 per person in prison each year.

“This approach has failed to address underlying issues,” said Troy Vaughn, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Reentry Partnership, which supports people coming home from prison. “When we incarcerate people, we see the exacerbation of problems like homelessness, unemployment and substance use. People are worse off upon re-entry.”

Prop 36 undoes parts of Prop 47, a landmark 2014 reform that redirected perpetrators of certain minor crimes out of the prison system; the $800m in savings from reduced incarceration was invested in services, including treatment and diversion programs.

Michael Atinsky (right) leads a discussion at the Stanislaus county jail in Modesto, California, on 25 March 2014. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

Vaughn argues it was difficult to overcome the narrative that Prop 47 caused rises in crime and violence, despite studies suggesting it did not. Headlines and viral videos about store robberies dominated news cycles in recent years. Vital re-entry programs and services that have been funded by Prop 47 savings are also now threatened, he warned.

Others worry the new measures will lead to increasingly dangerous overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Francisco Villarruel, a social welfare student at the University of California at Los Angeles who spent 17 years in the California prison system, recalled overcrowding forcing incarcerated people to sleep in gyms in cramped quarters with limited bathroom access: “When you put people in these very harsh environments, it can create more stress, tension, friction, and that’s how violence starts,” he said. “It scares me because prisons can have a disastrous effect on somebody. It can deteriorate somebody’s mind and body.”

Prop 36 will also see more people stuck in jail pre-trial on felony charges, which could be concerning in LA county, said Summer Lacey, criminal justice director at the ACLU of Southern California; lawsuits have repeatedly documented horrid conditions, including people with mental illnesses being chained to chairs for hours and routine violence by officers. “One thing that is clear from that litigation is the more people who are in jail, the worse the conditions are,” she said.

The 7-Eleven press conference in Los Angeles in October. Photograph: Damian Dovarganes/AP

Critics of Prop 36 have raised concerns about the crisis of fatalities in jails, including from overdoses: “We anticipate and fear increased deaths in custody either by substance use or death by suicide or just lack of medical care. There are so many reasons people are dying in custody, and they’re all exacerbated by more people being in jail and for longer time,” said Shayla Wilson, policy and advocacy adviser at La Defensa, an LA-based group.

Prosecutors across 58 counties will have discretion to choose whether to file Prop 36 cases, which means there could be more aggressive crackdowns in more right-leaning jurisdictions, said Scott Graves, budget director of the California Budget and Policy Center, a research non-profit that analyzed potential Prop 36 impacts.

Regardless, people of color will be disproportionately affected, he said: “More conservative district attorneys and some law enforcement associations over many decades have been very clever about defining public safety essentially as arresting a lot of people, mainly people of color, and locking them up for as long as possible. We already tried that in the 70s, 80s and 90s. California got very good at building a lot of prisons, and people didn’t necessarily feel safer.”

No new treatment funding

Counties across California are already struggling with shortages of services and residential beds, with a survey finding that unhoused people interested in addiction treatment regularly can’t access it.

“We do not have enough treatment for the people who want it, let alone the people we are trying to force into it,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of Prosecutors Alliance Action, a California criminal justice reform group.

Many district attorneys and police agencies that announced recent Prop 36 crackdowns did not respond to inquiries last week about whether jailed defendants were being offered treatment. A spokesperson for the Folsom police department, which boasted of Prop 36 arrests, said none had been treatment-eligible drug violations.

Jeff Reisig, the Yolo county district attorney, who helped craft Prop 36, said that within the first two weeks of the law, he filed nine felony drug-possession cases where defendants could do treatment instead of prison, and that so far one was pursuing that route. He said services were available in his jurisdiction, but added: “Other counties don’t have those treatment beds, or enough of them, and they’re going to need to quickly ramp up.”

The Twin Towers Correctional Facility on 27 April 2017, in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Chris Carlson/AP

Regarding concerns about jail overcrowding, Reisig said county sheriffs can make agreements with each other to house detainees if one jail system is at capacity, and that he believes jails are safer for people at risk of overdose than being on the street.

“Will more people end up held in jail and going to prison, particularly fentanyl dealers and recidivist thieves? Yes, and that was desperately needed,” he said. In the past, people with misdemeanors frequently failed to show up in court, and now he hopes jailing them and mandating treatment will save lives.

Jackson, the San Joaquin county probation department chief, said his jurisdiction has some providers in place. But he expects capacity to become an issue: he has projected that the number of people his department supervises could increase by 300%.

Still, he argues, previous criminal justice reform in the state went too far, and Prop 36 was essential to restoring accountability for certain crimes.

“There were no consequences and no supervision. And you have victims just feeling helpless. It’s time to bring that pendulum back to the middle,” he said.

Reisig says he’s spoken to police across the state who feel motivated by Prop 36: “They’re excited and optimistic that their work will now have tangible results to improve their community, particularly on retail theft. It’s been jubilation from frontline law enforcement. And the retailers, too … Our biggest donors – Walmart, Target, Home Depot, 7-Eleven – they’re all ecstatic that finally there will be some meaningful accountability.”