The Manhattan Institute study comes as a new ballot measure to roll-back portions of Proposition 47 is on California’s ballot in November.
A criminal-justice reform ballot initiative California passed ten years ago produced higher crime rates and exacerbated drug abuse problems, according to a new think tank report.
The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, released a study Thursday showing how criminal behavior went up and drug abuse worsened because of Proposition 47, a measure passed in 2014 that downgraded penalties for various “petty” criminal offenses.
“Representative data from Riverside, one of California’s largest counties, suggest that Prop 47 increased re-offending, including serious felony re-offending, detention times, failures to appear in court, warrants issued on offenders, case dismissals in conjunction with plea deals, and the persistence levels of drug and theft offenders,” the report reads.
“These shifts have also resulted in fewer defendants participating in in-custody drug treatment programs or other mandatory, supervised services because the incentives for doing so (avoiding prosecution and significant sentences) have evaporated,” it adds.
Manhattan Institute director of policing and public safety Hannah Meyers authored the report based primarily on data obtained from the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. Riverside is the fourth largest county in California with a population of about 2.5 million people.
Meyers’s report contains data comparing public safety in Riverside just before and immediately after Proposition 47, and additional data from 2023, almost a decade after the ballot initiative passed with nearly 60 percent support.
Riverside County felony cases dropped about 30 percent and misdemeanor cases ticked up 3.5 percent after Proposition 47 passed, a natural outcome of reclassifying criminal offenses, according to the report. Additionally, the number of unique felony defendants dropped 23 percent and the total unique misdemeanor defendants fell only 2.3 percent.
The reclassification likely caused the number of cases per felon to go down 31.6 percent, while the number of cases per misdemeanor offender rose over 47 percent after Proposition 47 was enacted, the report says.
Proposition 47 also led to an increase in the number of misdemeanor cases filed against defendants awaiting trial on initial cases. Defendants became much less likely to show up to court for those misdemeanor cases, the Manhattan Institute study found.
Relatedly, there was a 166 percent increase in cases dismissed in conjunction with a plea agreement among defendants affected by Proposition 47, meaning prosecutors were enforcing a single case as defendants racked up cases during the period when the initial case was resolved. Instead of pursing every individual case, the prosecutors lumped them together into the plea deals, the report states.
More drug and theft offenders became chronic offenders after the passage of Proposition 47, which reduced consequences for their actions. Chronic offenders are people with three or more alleged offenses referred to the Riverside County District Attorney’s office. The share of chronic drug offenders went up 10.3 percent and the number of chronic theft offenders increased 6.3 percent following the passage of Proposition 47.
As a result of Proposition 47, recidivism rates went up significantly for defendants who faced serious felony convictions and referrals, and arrests and convictions involving victims. At the same time, overall arrests went down for Proposition 47 offenses at a rate greater than the reduced arrests for offenses not covered by Proposition 47, the study indicates.
The drug abuse data cited in the Manhattan Institute’s report comes from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Treatment Episode Data Set, or TEDS, which details admissions rates for substance abuse treatment.
The Inland Empire, a California region mostly encompassing Riverside and San Bernadino counties, had a 16 percent increase in drug admissions after the enactment Proposition 47, the TEDS data show. Advocates for Proposition 47 believed individuals experiencing drug addiction should be kept outside of the criminal justice system, but the data appear to show drug abuse got worse as a result.
Separate data from the Riverside University Health System suggests that overdose deaths spiked 8.5 percent from 2014-15, as opioid deaths became a smaller share of overall overdose fatalities. With the diminished threat of harsher sentences, defendants faced less of an incentive to participate in drug rehabilitation programs. As a result, fewer people participated in the in-custody drug treatment programs, the report suggests, based on data from the Riverside County District Attorney’s office.
“A return to the pre–Prop 47 threshold for felony charges across crime categories, and/or expanding the recidivist provision across crime categories, would once again push at-risk offenders away from criminality and drug abuse, and offer them and the citizens of California better opportunities to thrive,” the report concludes.
The Manhattan Institute study comes as a new ballot measure to roll-back portions of Proposition 47 is on California’s ballot in November. Proposition 36 would restore possible felony charges for repeat drug-possession and theft offenses, a potential step towards mitigating the problems Proposition 47 created.
Vice President Kamala Harris, California’s attorney general when Proposition 47 was passed, did not take a position on the hotly contested measure. Harris has also declined to take a position on Proposition 36, despite running heavily on her prosecutorial background.
Four years ago, Harris supported defunding the police and other soft-on-crime measures. That was followed by a spike in violent crime across American cities.
California appear residents increasingly dissatisfied with the state’s embrace of the left-wing criminal justice reform movement and its consequences for inner-city residents.
Soft-on-crime Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascon (D) is trailing badly in polling against moderate independent challenger Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor. In 2022, San Francisco voters recalled far-left district attorney Chesa Boudin, whose lack of criminal prosecutions was widely blamed for the city’s surge in violent crime and public disorder.
California governor Gavin Newsom, widely considered a likely Democratic presidential candidate in the future, strongly supported Proposition 47 when it came to a vote. More recently, Newsom has attempted to distance himself from the soft-on-crime wing of his party by getting behind efforts to crackdown on theft and prosecute more offenders.