Newsom signs new retail theft laws as voters weigh even tougher penalties

Gov. Gavin Newsom, still stinging from a public defeat last month, signed a package of bills Friday that he and lawmakers pledged will combat rising retail theft. 

The 10 bills are intended to make it easier to prosecute people suspected of retail and vehicle theft without undoing changes voters approved a decade ago that reduced prison sentences for nonviolent crimes. 

Voters in November will see a separate ballot measure, Proposition 36, that would go further by increasing sentences for property crimes and offenses related to fentanyl. Newsom and other Democrats oppose the ballot measure, which they say would restore policies that they contend failed to improve public safety even as they packed prisons with nonviolent offenders.

The bills Newsom signed would make repeated theft convictions a felony, collect crimes across multiple counties into one court so they can be charged as a felony and allow police to arrest someone on suspicion of retail theft even if the officer does not witness the crime.

Shoplifting and retail theft are “the issue that is front and center of the consciousness of so many Californians,” Newsom said at the signing Friday at a Home Depot in San Jose where he was joined by Democratic lawmakers and Attorney General Rob Bonta. “We didn’t just wake up to this issue.” 

“This is the real deal. Grocers and retailers understand that,” Newsom said.

Newsom’s signature comes 45 days after the collapse of a crime bill that he had hoped would fend off Republicans and some conservative Democrats who demanded major changes to a decade-long project aimed at reducing California’s prison population. The bill would have placed an additional measure on the November ballot to compete with Prop. 36.

A contingent of Democrats opposed or withheld votes for the bill because they said it would disproportionately affect communities of color while reinstituting some of the criminal justice policies that once pushed California prisons to house more than double their capacity. 

A new poll suggests voters favor tougher penalties for some crimes. A Los Angeles Times poll of more than 3,000 likely voters found strong support for Prop 36 and significant concerns about retail theft. About 56% of respondents said they would vote yes.

The poll’s director, Mark DiCamillo, attributed the support for a harsher anti-crime measure to the “great visibility” of retail crime. 

Property crime statistics show property crime rates in 2023 — specifically shoplifting and commercial burglaries — soared after the COVID-19 pandemic  higher than at any time since at least 2000, according to an analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California. The authors noted that shoplifting tends to be underreported, so the actual numbers are likely higher.  

Democrats say they’re hearing from voters about crime, and some of them are breaking with Newsom to support Prop 36. 

“While these bills are an important first step to address the crisis of retail theft, they are just that — a first step,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat who supports Prop 36, said in a written statement. “Fully addressing the rise in retail theft requires acknowledging one of the key underlying causes of those thefts – drug and alcohol addiction. Like the governor, I never want to go back to the era of mass incarceration. But the time to begin the era of mass treatment is now.”

In 2014, voters passed Proposition 47, aimed at reducing California’s overcrowded prisons in part by changing some felony crimes to misdemeanors. Among those changes was raising the threshold for felony shoplifting to $950.

Prop 47 made some simple drug possession charges into misdemeanors, and allowed people who were convicted of felonies on those charges before 2014 to have them reclassified to misdemeanors. 

That shakeup of the criminal justice system has had measurable impacts: A February report from the Board of State and Community Corrections found that the state saved $93 million between 2019 and 2023 by diverting more than 21,000 people from jail or prison and providing them substance abuse and mental health treatment instead. 

According to the study, those 21,000 people had a recidivism rate of 15.3%, far lower than the statewide rate of about 40%. 

In the decade since, Prop 47 has become a conservative target, blamed by some sheriffs and prosecutors for viral videos of shoplifters converging on department stores and increases in some property crimes. 

This year, they proposed a rollback — Prop 36 — which would allow district attorneys to charge people with a felony on a third offense for drug possession, or for thefts of less than $950. It would also allow for harsher penalties for people who traffic fentanyl that leads to someone’s death. 

The bill would create a “treatment-mandated felony” that would permit people convicted of multiple drug possession crimes the option of participating in drug and mental health treatment instead of being incarcerated. 

It could also end up costing the prison system hundreds of millions of dollars a year to house more people. 

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