Fact check: Are California sentencing laws to blame for recent robberies?

Claim: With the rise in smash-and-grab robberies happening in California, some lawmakers and members of law enforcement are pointing fingers at Proposition 47, a measured passed by 60% of state voters in 2014 that reduced penalties for some non-violent drug and theft offenses.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, currently running for Attorney General, recently called Proposition 47 “the biggest con job in California history” in comments to a Los Angeles Times columnist.

Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, said in a recent blog post the proposition “all but legalized retail theft,” and “crime predictably rose” after its passing.

Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, drew a direct line between recent retail thefts and the controversial law.

“We are watching an epidemic of theft caused by Proposition 47 that over promised and under delivered,” he said in a statement last month.

Rating: Mostly false

Details: Californians passed Proposition 47 in 2014, approving broad changes to how the state classifies certain lower-level drug and property offenses. Shoplifting, grand theft and receiving stolen property in cases where the value is less than $950 are now considered misdemeanors. Previously, those crimes were classified as felonies. The state’s prison population fell as a result.

Some law enforcement and retailers argue thieves were emboldened by knowing they could steal up to $950 of merchandise and still avoid a felony charge.

Shoplifting has been a growing concern, but the recent large-scale thefts are “raising it to a whole new level,” California Retailers Association President and CEO Rachel Michelin recently told the Associated Press.

“We feel a little bit like we’re under assault,” she said.

Yet data from the California Department of Justice shows property crime steadily decreased in the years after voters approved Proposition 47 in 2014, but not in the immediate aftermath.

In 2015, incidents of property crime rose 8.15% compared to 2014, state data show. In the following years, it dropped, first by 2.19% in 2016, then 1.46% in 2017; 4.64% in 2018; 2.74% in 2019; and 8.09% in 2020.

Shoplifting incidents increased by 11.67% in 2015, but fell the following years, down 9.27% in 2016; 7.14% in 2017; and 2.38% in 2018. It rose slightly, by 1.04% in 2019, but fell by 29.02% in 2020.

Overall, the number of property crimes recorded the year Proposition 47 was passed — 946,682 — is more than the 915,197 recorded in 2019. In 2020, the state recorded 841,171 incidents of property crime, though many stores closed due to the pandemic.

Elliott P. Currie, a professor of criminology, law, and society at University of California Irvine, said it is hard to accurately track the impact of Proposition 47 on crime rates because low-level thefts like shoplifting and larceny are often underreported.

The recent high-profile smash and grab robberies however, are not related to Proposition 47, he said.

“Prop. 47 is not going to get you out of a conviction or sentence for committing one of these kinds of crimes,” he said.

The nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California in 2018 studied how the proposition affected crime, and found no evidence it led to an increase in violent crime, but some evidence it contributed to a rise in property crime.

PPIC reported the proposition led to an increase in larceny thefts like pick pocketing, purse snatching, shoplifting and theft from motor vehicles, which increased by roughly 9% compared to other states that best represent what California’s crime rates would be like without the reform.

PPIC also noted that Proposition 47 resulted in a decrease in the state’s jail population and a decrease in recidivism, or the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend.

“By December 2016, the state’s prison and jail populations had dropped by more than 15,000 inmates. The state’s incarceration rate is now at levels not seen since the early 1990s,” the 2018 report said.

On the whole, PPIC noted, California’s current crime rates are not nearly as high as those recorded in the 1980s and 1990s.

“California’s crime rates remain comparable to the low rates observed in the 1960s – even with the dramatic reductions in incarceration ushered in by recent criminal justice reforms,” the authors wrote in 2018.

The same year, researchers at University of California, Irvine, analyzed the impacts of Proposition 47 on crime rates by comparing California crime rates to a “synthetic California,” a weighted combination of other states’ crime rates that closely matched California’s rates prior to 2014.

Compared to those states, California had similar crime rates even after the law was enacted, UC Irvine researchers concluded.

This story was originally published December 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Fact check: Are California sentencing laws to blame for recent robberies?."