I don’t often disagree with Gavin Newsom, but I do on the topic of Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot initiative that made theft of less than $950 a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
Prop 47’s stated purpose was “to ensure that prison spending is focused on violent and serious offenses, to maximize alternatives for non-serious, nonviolent crime, and to invest the savings generated from [the proposition] into prevention and support programs in K-12 schools, victim services, and mental health and drug treatment.” This occurred against a backdrop of ever-increasing costs in California’s prison system as well as prison overcrowding that judges were objecting to. Californians voted overwhelmingly (60% to 40%) in favor of Prop 47.
However, Prop 47 always was contentious. Earlier this year, a coalition of 47’s opponents, including Walmart, Target and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, funded a ballot initiative to repeal it.
This didn’t sit well with Gov. Newson, who let his own opposition to the repeal become publicly known. I once asked him why, since it seemed to me that Prop 47 was basically a green light for shoplifters. Newsom said, in essence, that California’s theft laws already were “among the toughest in America,” and that anyway most shoplifters didn’t give a damn about the $950 threshold—in other words, they’d steal whatever they could, and would hardly tally the retail costs up on their smart phone calculators and stop when it hit $949.
Newsom worked this past year to place another initiative on the ballot that would have competed with the Repeal 47 measure. It claimed to provide “targeted reforms to Prop 47,” while preserving the $950 threshold. One of Newsom’s top allies, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, explained, “Californians…don’t want to go back to mass incarceration, and spending billions of dollars to imprison people for years over minor offenses.”
I beg to differ. Speaking as a Californian, I do wish to imprison people for retail theft. I’ve seen retail stores shut down over and over again in Oakland because shoplifters are allowed to steal with impunity, and I believe that Prop 47 is a contributing cause to our epidemic of shoplifting.
Interestingly, two days ago Newsom surprised everyone by announcing that he was dropping his ballot initiative, meaning that the Repeal 47 measure will be the only one to appear on the November ballot. He said the reason he was taking this step was because “we [were] unable to meet the ballot deadline to secure necessary amendments to ensure this measure’s success.” That sounds plausible, but I don’t quite buy it. I think a lot of people felt the way I do: that we need to get rid of Prop 47 altogether, instead of tinkering with it around the edges while preserving the $950 threshold. I think that the Governor was getting a lot of political heat for seeming to oppose a tough-on-crime initiative when he’s spent so much time and energy over the past few years projecting a tough-on-crime image. I have no idea if he’s running for president (no one does), or what’s going on with all the back-room discussions among Democratic leaders regarding Pres. Biden’s fitness or lack thereof; but the last thing Newsom needs is Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, with their huge amplifiers, accusing him of coddling criminals.
At any rate, I’m glad the Governor killed his competing measure, and I hope and assume Prop 47 will be repealed in November. Its backers may have meant well, but as with so many good intentions, it turned into a fiasco.
Steve Heimoff