California voters on Tuesday approved a November ballot measure that will impose stricter penalties for repeat theft and crimes involving fentanyl, steering away from recent progressive policies that critics blamed for increased lawlessness.
The Associated Press declared the passage of Proposition 36 about an hour after polls closed, an indication of the strong voter support for the measure.
Proposition 36 will make it a felony for someone to steal merchandise of any value after two previous offenses and can lead to longer jail or prison sentences.
The ballot measure also allows judges to sentence convicted drug dealers who traffic in large quantities of hard drugs, including fentanyl, or who are armed with a gun while trafficking the drugs to state prison instead of county jails. It will also create a “treatment-mandated felony” as a new category of crime, by giving some eligible drug offenders an option for treatment instead of jail time.
The measure undoes key parts of a 2014 ballot measure, Proposition 47, which voters overwhelmingly passed during a time when the state Democratic leaders sought reverse what they argued was an ineffective tough-on-crime era that swelled the state’s prison population to unconstitutional levels.
Proposition 36 is expected to cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year. About $100 million in annual savings that were directed to anti-recidivism programs are likely to be reduced by the passage of this measure.
Supporters of the measure spent $16.23 million. Early funders included Walmart, Home Depot and Target. Others included the California Republican Party, which contributed $1 million. Mayors of big cities including San Francisco, San José and San Diego supported the measure, as did prosecutors and law enforcement leaders, including the California District Attorneys Assn. and the California Sheriff’s Assn.
Opponents of the measure were outspent, having raised just over $7.5 million. Those funders included criminal justice reformists Patty Quillin, Stacy Schusterman, Elizabeth Simons and husband Mark Heising, and Quinn Delaney. Unions representing healthcare workers and teachers were also major contributors to the opposition.
