In July 2013, my house was burglarized. The event left me with recurring nightmares and my family with a long list of missing items: cameras, laptops, my little brother’s Nintendo DS and a SIM card containing home videos of my brother and me as children.
A little more than a year after the burglary, California’s residents—my parents included—voted resoundingly in support of Proposition 47, a proposed law which would grant leniency to certain nonviolent criminal offenses, including petty theft, burglary and several drug offenses. The controversy surrounding Prop 47 erupted not long after its initial passage, as voters began to understand what the law’s implementation entailed. Though the law offered a chance to start afresh for thousands of ex-cons, many voters saw things differently: spikes in statewide break-ins, automobile thefts and larceny were soon attributed to Prop 47, giving rise to a growing movement to repeal the law.
For me, the story of Prop 47 has been both deeply personal and deeply complicated. The law fixed several major flaws in the criminal justice system by reducing the collateral consequences of imprisonment for many ex-cons. These reductions, proponents argued, were supposed to ease social reentry after prison life and lower recidivism rates.
But Prop 47 has also led to rising rates of burglary, larceny and drug use. And for many whose homes have been burglarized—either before or after the law’s passage—Prop 47 has eroded a sense of safety and security in their very own neighborhoods. Ultimately, Prop 47 was never meant to be the end to all criminal justice reform: instead, the law was supposed to lay the groundwork for larger-scale changes to the criminal justice system that emphasized rehabilitation over retribution. Prop 47 itself merely opened the doors and redirected funds from California’s overcrowded prison system to underfunded, under-resourced school districts. The law itself already represented a radical shift away from California’s standard criminal justice system: it gave former criminals a legitimate second chance to turn their lives around.
A Short History of Prop 47
California’s proposition system is simple enough in theory. It allows any voter to propose a law—the proposition—on the ballot for an election cycle. If enough voters support a given proposition, first through signatures and then a vote, the proposal then becomes a law. This system places tremendous power into the hands of the voters themselves: in 2016, for example, voters utilized the proposition system to pass a tax on all soft drinks, overriding the lobbying influence of the soda industry.
Nevertheless, the efficacy of this direct democracy system has come under fire in recent years. Many have argued that California’s government hands excessive amounts of power to individual voters who lack the competency to wield it. Journalist David Dayen, for example, argued that it “disempowers legislators” while privileging special interest groups; others have pointed out that the proposition system is by nature inflexible and stagnant.
The case of Prop 47 exemplifies these growing tensions. On paper, the terms of the proposition were straightforward: the law reclassifies certain drug possession charges from felonies to misdemeanors and mandates misdemeanor sentences for petty theft, check forgery and receiving stolen property when less than $950 is involved. The proposition’s stated goal was to reduce overcrowding in county jails, thereby liberating up to $150 million for the state to reinvest elsewhere.
When it was pitched to voters, however, Prop 47 was relabeled the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Flyers promoting its passage were generic and simple, emblazoned with slogans such as “Justice that Works”; other promotional materials flaunted pictures of young, inquisitive-looking children, some with their hands raised. There were few mentions of sentencing changes or criminal justice reform.
The marketing tactics, if not entirely accurate, were understandable. California’s legal system gives just 150 days for the supporters of any proposition to collect the necessary signatures. And even if the proposition’s supporters succeed, they’ll still face the will of a large, diverse, active body of in-state voters come election time. Thus, the supporters of Prop 47 had little reason to be completely upfront about the nature of their reforms: a measure proposing changes as radical as Prop 47 needed to be palatable to as many voters as possible in order to pass.
My parents, who voted in favor of its passage, remember distinctly what they had been told: that Prop 47 would reduce the burden on the criminal justice system and generate additional funding which could then be reinvested in local school districts. The marketing behind Prop 47 hadn’t been explicitly false, per se—the prop did state that it would reduce prison overcrowding—but proponents had conveniently excluded details about the nature of the prison reforms which might have tipped the balance against its favor.
But even voters who were aware of Prop 47’s purpose seem to have lost their faith in the proposal. Saratoga City Councilmember Rishi Kumar voted in favor of the proposition in 2014 because it “appealed to [his]social conscience.” But as he told me in an interview, he changed his mind soon after he saw an increase in burglaries in Saratoga.
Kumar was elected in the 2014 election cycle. That summer—just four months before he was elected—Saratoga had experienced an uptick in the number of residential burglaries, and many neighborhood dinner-table conversations focused on the growing sense that Saratoga wasn’t as safe as it used to be. Not long after, a flyer from Kumar’s campaign promising to address the “lingering threat of car break-ins, mailbox thefts, and residential burglaries” soon arrived at our house. At the time, concerns of residential safety ran high in Saratoga. From 2013 to 2014, the number of burglaries jumped from 89 to 136; the number would keep growing until it peaked at 159 in 2016.
After he was elected, Kumar first worked on local reforms. When residents from 22 neighborhoods showed up to a city council meeting that June, expressing interest in new community security programs, Kumar knew he’d struck a nerve. Since the early 2000s, “Neighborhood Watch” signs had dotted the streets of Saratoga. But these, Kumar said, were “relics of the past.” Because of a lack of neighborhood leadership, the signs served little purpose beyond mild scare tactics. Kumar and his team rebuilt the Neighborhood Watch program from the ground up. They designated “safety captains” for each neighborhood in Saratoga to communicate with city staff, and gave out grant money on a case-by-case basis. Thus far, the results have been promising—in 2017, the year after Kumar first initiated these programs, the burglary rate dropped by 47 percent.
“The data says it all,” Kumar said. “Today, we have active, engaged leadership in almost every part of Saratoga, and the city has formalized the structure for its program to ensure Neighborhood Watch programs will always be alive and kicking.”
The outward changes have undeniably helped Saratoga, but individual residents have expressed concerns of racial profiling in Neighborhood Watch systems across the country. Such cases of profiling are not rare: one Neighborhood Watch group in Shreveport, Louisiana suggested that residents keep an eye out for “young black men” after a string of break-ins. To attempt to mitigate these risks, the program holds frequent interactive Q&A sessions with the local Sheriff’s Department—but even Kumar admits it’s not a perfect solution.“The discussion coalesced around how safety was very important, and how there was perhaps a price to pay as crime went up,” Kumar said.
Kumar and the Neighborhood Watch captains have since turned their attention directly to Prop 47. Currently, the captains are actively working to collect signatures for KeepCalSafe.org, a 2020 ballot initiative seeking to tighten punishments for petty theft and other crimes.
Despite the rising burglary rates, Saratoga remains an extremely safe city. Its property and violent crime rates consistently fall below national and even Santa Clara County averages. Consequently, citizens are quick to notice even the mildest uptick in crime. The city experienced a string of break-ins and burglaries that even normal fluctuations can’t explain. And a jump like the one that occurred between 2013 and 2014 left many residents—including my own parents—deeply unsettled. It is unsurprising that Kumar’s reforms struck a nerve with local residents, who, according to Kumar, have overwhelmingly supported the KeepCalSafe initiative.
“I believe some are nostalgic for the good ole days when they did not have to lock their doors and windows,” he said. “Times have changed, unfortunately! Crime is happening, and we have to take precautions and apply deterrents.”
The Police Perspective
Earlier this year, President of the California Police Chiefs Association David Swing published an editorial in the San Jose Mercury News in response to an article from the Bay Area News Group, a piece which he felt had mischaracterized the effects of the proposition. Swing argued that Prop 47 had not only placed a tremendous burden on police officers across the state, but also made habitual drug users less likely to seek treatment—neither of which were part of the law’s originally intended outcomes.
When I interviewed him about whether he supported Prop 47, however, he was quick to correct me on any assumptions that his beliefs on Prop 47 were linked to his personal values. “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion right out of the gate,” Swing said. “I don’t think it’s about like or dislike of the proposition; I think it’s a concern for how we as police officers reach out to our communities to ensure safety.”
In his article for the Mercury News, Swing noted that the reported 9 percent increase in larceny, or personal property theft, could very well be a “gross misrepresentation”—a vast underestimation of the true crime rates. Because many cases of personal property theft aren’t noticed until long after the crime occurs, there’s often little evidence for the victims to report, Swing explained. So many don’t bother reporting the crimes at all. Data from a preliminary FBI crime report appears to support these conclusions: larceny-theft jumped by 12 percent following the passage of Prop 47.
The $950 limit has also made apprehending and imprisoning criminals more difficult: according to Swing, many officers have arrested perpetrators multiple times in a single day. In Morgan Hill specifically, Swing recalls several instances where officers arrested individuals for crimes that—had it not been for Prop 47—would have landed them in county jail.
More than once, Swing has heard stories from his fellow officers of criminals committing theft with calculators. “Upon being confronted and apprehended, they tell us, ‘You can’t send me to jail—it’s under $950,’” Swing said. Incidents of misdemeanor theft and larceny have become increasingly common throughout the state. According to a report from the PPIC, larceny theft has increased by nine percent since 2014, with car break-ins accounting for roughly three-fourths of the increase.
“The men and women who do this job continue to adapt to the changing landscape,” Swing said, “but I can’t help but think that it would be demoralizing to a certain extent if they don’t see the true impact of their work.” Based on the data itself—as well as reactions he has gauged from police chiefs throughout the state—Swing believes there is a compelling need to change the law.
For a moment at the end of the interview, he abandoned advancing his arguments through data and spoke to me directly: “People like you and me that have a moral compass that points true North don’t need sanctions to help us make the right decision. But for those who choose to commit crime without abandon and have no problem victimizing others, whether that’s a person or a business—clearly individuals like that need to have something that helps recalibrate their compass. Unfortunately, what Prop 47 did is it took that calibration away.”
Enduring Hope in the Legal System
Others who have been affected directly by Prop 47’s outcomes, however—such as public defenders—continue to defend the law’s merits. Among them is Lara Wallman, Deputy Public Defender in the Santa Clara County. Wallman specializes in Prop 47 cases and remembers she was “thrilled” when the initiative passed in 2014.
Wallman’s take on Prop 47, in contrast to Swing’s and Kumar’s, focused less on rising crime rates and more on a new system of rehabilitation for drug users. Many of her clients struggled with drug addiction and were imprisoned on either felony drug possession charges or theft-related crimes that they committed to support their habits. “These clients suffer from substance abuse issues, and sending them to prison was not the solution,” Wallman said.
One client Wallman worked with had been sentenced to life in prison for possessing less than one gram of cocaine. Following the passage of Prop 47, Wallman and her team were able to petition to free him after he had served nearly a decade. A 2010 report from the National Institutes of Health seems to confirm the inefficacy of imprisonment for drug addiction treatment. The NIH’s survey of recidivism rates in 15 states found that nearly 25 percent of felons convicted of drug possession would be rearrested within three years, most likely for a similar drug possession charge.
The state of rehabilitative treatment in prison—or the lack thereof—offers a simple explanation: people who enter jail with drug habits tend to maintain them. According to a report from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 65 percent of prison inmates meet criteria for substance abuse. Just 11 percent will seek treatment of any kind.
The previous system California had in place for treating drug addiction was broken. Even if Prop 47 brought some unintended consequences, it appeared to be a step in the right direction for treating drug use.
Nonetheless, even Wallman admits that the “revolving door” Swing mentioned earlier is very much alive. “Unfortunately, we public defenders often see our clients back again,” Wallman said. “But, as I said earlier, many of those are suffering from substance abuse.”
Wallman has personally worked with clients who committed nighttime commercial burglaries despite knowing full well that their crime would be classified as a felony. “When someone is committing a crime to feed their habit, they are not in a rational state of mind where they are thinking about making sure the value of what they take is less than $950,” Wallman said.
This argument about a “rational state of mind” also helps clarify Swing’s anecdotes about criminals with calculators. After all, someone who is using a calculator to stay within Prop 47’s $950 limit does not—by most standards of a “rational state of mind”—seem to be thinking clearly.
To any staunch opponent of Prop 47, Wallman’s story offers an alternative perspective. The theory behind Wallman’s arguments supporting an alternative, more lenient approach to criminal justice makes sense: the current criminal justice system clearly isn’t working for treating and rehabilitating drug addicts.
But it’s unclear whether or not Prop 47 itself—a law which grants clemency to drug addicts without any added incentives to seek rehabilitation—was an effective solution on its own. To optimistic supporters, Prop 47 laid the foundation for broader changes to California’s approach toward criminal justice that unfortunately never materialized; to cynics, however, it was a hastily-repackaged initiative written in response to overcrowded prisons.
Regardless of Prop 47’s flaws, Wallman continues to stand by the law and the clients it has helped protect. “Having a felony on your record is really a stigma that follows you for your entire life. No one will hire you and no one will rent to you,” Wallman said. “It ends up being a revolving door because persons are more likely to commit crimes when they are not working— if only to try to feed themselves and their families.”
The Faces of Prop 47
Ingrid Archie was 14 when she first went to juvenile hall. She grew up in the 1980s during the war on drugs. Her adolescent criminal actions, she says, were deeply embedded in her upbringing: her mother was a drug addict and her father was legally barred from taking custody of her because he had a felony marijuana conviction on his record. Since early childhood, she’d been shuffled in and out of foster homes.
The war on drugs disproportionately affected poor, black communities like the one in Los Angeles where Archie grew up. Author Michelle Alexander contends in her book “The New Jim Crow” that the aggressive police tactics the Reagan Administration promoted as part of their response to the purported “crack epidemic” predominantly targeted poor, African-American neighborhoods—long before the supposed “epidemic” fully materialized. Archie and her family were caught in the crossfire. “I was basically collateral damage,” Archie said.
Not long after she turned 19, Archie gave birth to her first daughter. She and her daughter split briefly when Archie was sent to jail, but reunited soon after her first prison stint ended in 2005. Despite her felony conviction, Archie managed to get back on her feet. With the help of a program called “A New Way of Life,” she found a place to stay and got a job at Verizon. For several years, things appeared to be going well.
It wouldn’t last.
In 2009, Verizon decided that it would no longer hire convicted felons. Archie lost her job and—because of her past criminal conviction—struggled to find a new one. Moreover, her criminal conviction prevented her from receiving child care assistance; she’d had a second child, and without a steady job was struggling to stay afloat.
Four years later, she found herself in prison again. She told MyProp47.org that she had been buying groceries with her daughters. One of them stayed in the car while she went inside with the other; the police came, and—even though she maintains that she’d only been in the store for five minutes—she was charged with felony child endangerment. Because of her past criminal record, she was sent to prison for three years this time.
Eventually, Archie did manage to turn her life around. She had learned about Prop 47 in 2015, not long after the law’s passage, and successfully appealed her felony conviction. Soon after she was released on probation, she reached out to A New Way of Life a second time.
The first time she sat down with A New Way of Life in 2005, Archie had been shocked. They had asked her about her long-term career goals: how she envisioned her future, for example, and where she saw herself in several years. At the time, Archie hadn’t known how to respond. “I was still young and fresh out of prison,” she said, “and I’d never been asked that before—of course in school I had, but never by someone in my community.”
This time, A New Way of Life set her up with a temporary canvassing job and a series of speaking engagements related to Prop 47; they soon decided that they wanted to hire her permanently as a Prop 47 specialist.
Archie considers herself lucky to have found A New Way of Life; many of her fellow inmates—especially those who were struggling with drug addictions—found it almost impossible to re-adjust to life outside once they were released. Many of these inmates were lost in the endless bureaucracy of post-prison life, from parole meetings to paperwork. They went to treatment programs only to find that these programs lacked the resources they needed; more often than not, they were simply redirected to other service organizations.
“Why would anybody want to come home and be shuffled around when all they want to do is stay clean and stay healthy?” she said.
When I asked Archie about her responses to critics of Prop 47, she sounded upset. She was angry mostly at the criminal justice system, which she said had prompted a culture of “locking people up” instead of rehabilitative treatment. Even when inmates were released, she said, the series of collateral consequences they faced made it difficult to start afresh. “When you get out of prison and all you’re hearing is ‘No, no, no,’ it’s a natural instinct to get discouraged,” she said. “If there’s nothing to help me do something with my life when I get home, why would I want to stay home?”
Prop 47 and A New Way of Life gave Archie a second chance to turn her life around that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. For her, Prop 47 was crucial in creating a new approach to criminal justice—a harbinger of larger-scale reform. “When you’re working from a place with people whose lives are actually impacted [by Prop 47], then you’d want to push for something that would help people lead sustainable lives so they don’t have to go back,” Archie said.
Moving Forward
For my parents, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to separate the story of Prop 47 from the burglary; it’s hard to forgive people like the stranger who broke into your house. In 2014, they voted for the proposition; now, though, they regret that choice. “Of course, if better rehabilitation existed, that would be good,” my father said. “But as a taxpayer I’d still prefer to pay more taxes to keep criminals in jail.”
And yet Archie’s experiences are proof that the law did help former convicts turn their lives around. There will always be people who commit crimes, but the current criminal justice system in California has made it difficult for even nonviolent felons to fully reintegrate into society.
It’s easy to reduce issues like Prop 47 to a series of statistics: rising burglary rates, for example, or an increase in break-ins. The solution some offer is to reverse all the changes that Prop 47 made. But as Wallman and Archie noted, the old system was broken from prison overcrowding to persistent recidivism.
Already, a new ballot proposition has emerged in California to repeal many of the reforms made by Prop 47—it will be on the ballot for the 2020 election cycle. For now, it seems unlikely that reforms like Prop 47 will occur in the foreseeable future.
But in the long term, Prop 47 may still come to be seen as a success. According to MyProp47.org, the funds that were saved from Prop 47 were ultimately redirected to under-resourced K-12 schools within the state of California—schools that serve communities which are markedly less privileged and fortunate than Saratoga. Though the PPIC report noted that it’s still too early to draw any firm conclusions about improved educational outcomes in these districts, the law lends hope for a more positive future in these communities.
More importantly, the law has already given a second chance to thousands across the state. And many of them, like Archie herself, have undeniably made their lives better. The law, as Archie herself stated, provided an opportunity to succeed that she’d never had before as a young, poor juvenile offender coming from a broken home. At its best, Prop 47 saw these individuals not as a statistical detriment to society, but as real people who needed support and guidance to turn their lives around. And for them—for the thousands of Ingrid Archies who have managed to turn their lives around—Prop 47 undeniably deserves a second chance at success.
Kyle Wang, a freshman, is a staff writer for Stanford Politics.