After being approved by voters by a wide margin, Proposition 36 went into effect across California on Wednesday, toughening penalties for certain theft and drug crimes.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said they would keep an eye on certain repeat violations as Prop. 36 goes into effect throughout California.
“Starting today, we will be monitoring people who begin to accrue convictions for certain types of crimes,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins explained. “So for a misdemeanor, petty theft and for drug offenses.”
Jenkins says Prop 36 won’t change many day-to-day decisions in her office, at least not right away. The new law was mainly intended to combat shoplifting.
It will require offenders to commit a number of offenses, so she says the real changes will come in time, as those offenders return to court and prosecutors try to convince judges that multiple convictions require harsher consequences.
“We’re going to add a layer to that that reinforces what the voters and the people of California have said, which is that we need to do more in court for repeat offenders,” the district attorney told CBS News Bay Area on Wednesday. .
Proposal 36 was widely supported by Californianswith the final results showing that almost 70% voted yes. And it was supported by the mayors of San Francisco and San Jose.
“It’s compassionate,” Mayor Matt Mahan said during the campaign. “It will not return us to an era of mass incarceration. But it does bring much-needed responsibility back into our society.”
The measure was opposed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
“That initiative has nothing to do with shoplifting,” Newsom said in October, criticizing Prop 36.
It was also opposed by many public defenders and many criminal justice reform advocates, who have argued that added pressure to push people toward treatment as an alternative to incarceration would lead to a demand for treatment services that are unavailable.
“There is not a single line item in this ballot initiative that creates new funding streams for new treatments,” Will Matthews of Californians for Safety and Justice argued ahead of the vote. “There is already a woeful lack of available treatments right now.”
“So that’s as far as drug possession goes,” Jenkins said of those concerns. “And at this point, almost all of those people have generally been given a stay or a warrant for their arrest and have not appeared in court. So it will be some time before that even happens and we need to start assessing whether or not there are enough. beds.”
So, time will tell how Proposition 36 will unfold in the real courtrooms. People hoping for immediate results may have to wait.
“I just want people to temper their expectations about when we will actually see the benefits of Prop. 36 play out in our city,” Jenkins said.
Wilson Walker
