It has been six months since California’s Prop 36 — often known as the “Homelessness, Drug Dependancy, and Theft Discount Act” — took impact after voters overwhelmingly handed the measure within the November 2024 basic election. Unsurprisingly, it took solely half a yr for the info to yield outcomes that have been eerily much like these from stop-and-frisk legal guidelines in NYC, the so-called “warfare on medication,” and, in fact, the infamous federal crime invoice of 1994.
Black individuals are being disproportionately focused and harmed as a result of we’re disproportionately poor and policed (and since regulation enforcement is inherently racist).
In response to the Los Angeles Sentinel, “Prop 36 elevated penalties for sure drug and theft crimes, reclassifying some as felonies, and lengthened sentences for particular offenses, significantly these involving a number of people or the sale of sure medication.” The regulation seems to be a reversal of the state’s Prop 47, which voters handed in 2014, considerably reducing the penalty for non-violent petty crimes, together with drug offenses and property crimes. Prop 47 reclassified sure felonies as misdemeanors and downgraded penalties for nonviolent crimes like drug possession for private use and the theft or receipt of stolen items valued at beneath $950.
Prop 36 is principally saying: “Nah, throw all them individuals in jail.”
The invoice had been offered as a manner of addressing Californians’ issues about rising theft and homelessness, however even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who initially opposed the laws, based on the Sentinel, appeared to all however admit that the aim of Prop 36 is to maintain extra prisons open by feeding them extra prisoners.
“We’re estimating that it might enhance at a price of over $130,000 per yr (for every jail inmate),” mentioned Newsom, who has allotted about $110 million in funding for Prop. 36 implementation. “That will put strain on among the different felony justice reforms which have been confirmed very profitable, and (Prop 36) would decelerate the discount of the whole variety of jail closures at a price to the taxpayers.”
Ricardo D. García, the chief public defender for Los Angeles County, had a special tackle Prop 36 and the rise in instances that the laws has yielded.
Poverty, homelessness, drug dependancy, and psychological sickness are driving elements,” Garcia mentioned.
“Prop 36 disproportionately hurts Black, Brown, and immigrant communities,” García mentioned. “We’re already under-resourced. Prop 36 and its therapy mandates are meaningless if there’s no mattress, no place for somebody to go to.”
Once more, that is how “powerful on crime” America has all the time operated. The “warfare on poverty” rapidly turns into a warfare on poor individuals. The “warfare on medication” turns into a warfare on drug addicts. And each warfare offered as a warfare on crime in the end turns into a purpose to focus on Black and Latino individuals disproportionately and, usually, at random. (We name it racial profiling. They name it: “Nicely, they’re those who’re committing all of the crimes.”)
Now for the enjoyable half. Let’s check out the info.
From the Sentinel:
In response to a report by Voice of San Diego, by way of San Diego Census and San Diego Police Division, knowledge exhibits that 32% of 374 individuals arrested for Prop 36-related drug or theft costs within the metropolis from the center of December by way of Could have been Black. Out of 1.9 million residents, Black individuals make up 5.6% of the town’s inhabitants.
Earlier than Prop 36 turned regulation, the L.A. County jails had a inhabitants of simply over 11,000 inmates, but it surely rapidly rose above 12,000, and reached over 13,000 in Could, earlier than falling to the “12,900 vary” earlier than the 4th of July vacation.
“We noticed 12 arrests earlier than Prop 36 on a lot of these offenses and since Could of 2025, we’re 594 arrests,” García mentioned.
In response to the L.A. County’s Public Defender’s Workplace’s web site, 700 attorneys are employed inside 32 workplace areas. Garcia mentioned every public defender has a case load, and Prop 36 is more and more changing into a burden for the most important county within the state.
Yoel Haile, the Director of the Felony Justice Program on the ACLU of Northern California (NorCal ACLU), penned a commentary concerning the variety of Prop 36 instances which might be popping up within the Bay Space.
About 90% of the individuals from north Alameda County — Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland — charged beneath Prop 36 are Black, whereas Black individuals make up simply 10% of Alameda County’s complete inhabitants, based on Haile’s commentary co-written with Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods.
It needs to be famous that Black individuals are disproportionately arrested for non-violent drug offenses regardless of the info persistently displaying that Black and white individuals use and promote medication at related charges.
We additionally should take note of the language in Prop 36 that enables for stiffer penalties for the sale of “sure medication.” Bear in mind the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which made penalties for possession of crack cocaine way more critical than these of powdered cocaine? In response to The Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights, the regulation “established a racially discriminatory 100:1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.”
“On account of this laws, for instance, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, which was disproportionately consumed by African People, triggered an automated five-year jail sentence — whereas 500 grams of powder cocaine, which was principally consumed by richer, White demographics, merited the identical punishment,” based on the report.
These racial disparities are by no means simply instances of easy happenstance. By all indications, they occur by design.
That is America.
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