Reform linked to increases in thefts but not other crimes
Voters approved Prop 47 to ease prison overcrowding, but critics say thefts have spiked since
A year-long study on Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reduced penalties for drugs and thefts to ease prison overcrowding, found it may be linked to rise in thefts but had no apparent effect on burglaries, stolen cars and violent crime.
The study also found a drop in repeat offenses involving drug and property crimes, though it could not say whether that was due to changes in law enforcement practices since voters approved the measure as part of a sentencing reform effort.
“We do see some evidence that Prop 47 may have contributed to a rise in larceny thefts, especially thefts from motor vehicles,” the study by the Public Policy Institute of California said.
Prop 47 has been hotly debated since nearly 60 percent of voters approved it in November 2014. The “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” — whose supporters included Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen and former San Jose and San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne — has since been blamed for a rash of car breakins and shoplifting.
Morgan Hill Police Chief David Swing, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said the PPIC study is similar to what the police chiefs association found in its own study.
“We definitely saw a connection to larceny and property crime,” said Jonathan Feldman, legislative advocate for the police chiefs association. “I’ve got examples from everywhere of individuals committing multiple thefts again and again and again without meeting any consequence.”
However, Prop 47 supporters like San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi noted the study also shows no link to an increase in violent crime, and attributed that in part to the measure allowing police to focus on more serious offenses.
“Since it passed it has been attacked on grounds that violent crime increased and that has not been the case,” Adachi said. He
added that since the measure San Francisco’s rate of arrests in homicides has risen significantly.
“The emphasis from detractors has been that you’re letting these folks off the hook because they don’t face a felony, that they’re committing more of these crimes,” Adachi said. “The other side of the argument is that it frees law enforcement to investigate and solve more serious crimes, which we think is a policy decision most citizens at least in San Francisco support.”
Prop 47 reduced penalties for personal illicit drug possession and for various forms of theft valued at no more than $950 — shoplifting, forgery, fraud, writing bad checks, receiving stolen property — from felonies punishable by prison to misdemeanors.
The state’s prison and jail populations dropped by more than 15,000 inmates by the end of 2016 to levels not seen since the early 1990s.
Critics have been gathering
signatures to qualify a ballot initiative they say would fix some of Prop 47’s flaws.
The PPIC study based its conclusions on comparisons of rates for specific crimes in various other states that had shown trends similar to those in California before Prop 47. Both the methods and findings were similar to another study earlier this year by UC Irvine.
For property crimes, the study found that California’s “notable decline in burglaries since 2012 is very similar to the sharp decrease observed in the comparison states.”
The study found that auto thefts rose in California, but noted that it was “not statistically significant compared to increases in comparison states.”
For “larceny thefts” — pick-pocketing, purse snatching, shoplifting and theft from motor vehicles — the study noted increases in both shoplifting and thefts from motor vehicles that have been blamed on Prop 47.
Shoplifting spiked after Prop 47 before subsiding in 2016, possibly due to increased law enforcement,
the study said. But it added that shoplifting accounted for just 2.4 percent of the increase in property crimes from 2014 to 2016.
Thefts from autos, however, began to jump in December 2014, the study found, adding that “there is no sign yet of thefts from motor vehicles returning to pre-reform levels.” The increase of 35,300 thefts from motor vehicles from 2014 to 2016 accounted for almost two-thirds of the 54,700 increase in the number of property crimes in California, the study said.
Compared with larceny rates in other states like Nevada and Maryland, the study estimated that Prop 47 led to a 9 percent increase since 2014, about 135 per 100,000 residents.
The study also found that since Prop 47, re-arrest and re-conviction rates for offenses that it reduced to misdemeanors were 10.3 and 11.3 percentage points lower, respectively. But the authors could not say whether changes in the way police treat those crimes played a role.