SACRAMENTO — Surrounded by district attorneys, sheriffs, state senators, business executives, and retail giants like Walmart and 7-Eleven, supporters of Proposition 36 gathered in Sacramento to mark what they called “100 days of real progress” since the law’s passage.
But while the tone was celebratory, the reality is far more complicated—and critics warn that what’s being framed as a success story may obscure deeper systemic concerns.
Passed in November 2024 with support in all 58 counties, Prop. 36 allows felony charges for individuals with prior theft or drug convictions—effectively rolling back parts of 2014’s Prop 47, which had reclassified many of those offenses as misdemeanors in a push for decarceration.
The new law was billed as a “common-sense” solution to rising retail theft and drug use, and Wednesday’s event aimed to showcase its early impact.
“We find ourselves at a watershed moment,” said Senator Tom Umberg (D–Santa Ana), who co-authored the law and now sponsors SB 38, a companion bill to help fund implementation. “We can make a difference with existing resources,” he claimed, while also acknowledging “great discrepancy exists in the cost estimates” and “much data is still needed.”
That caveat—buried beneath the optimism—hints at a broader issue. For all the self-congratulatory rhetoric, little independent data is available yet to assess whether Prop. 36 is truly working, or just feeding a return to punitive justice under the guise of treatment and accountability.
The event’s headline statistic came from Professor Greg DeAngelo, who reported that 90% of retail theft filings under Prop. 36 in the first 90 days were felonies, meaning the individuals had two or more prior theft convictions. Of those, 25% had prior violent felonies. On the drug side, 87% of charges were classified as “treatment mandated felonies,” also based on repeat offenses, and 26% of those had prior violent felonies.
Supporters seized on these numbers to argue that the law is targeting “repeat offenders,” not first-time or low-level cases.
“Prop. 36 is proving that we can hold repeat offenders accountable while also giving people a real path to recovery,” said Greg Totten, CEO of the California District Attorneys Association.
Yet critics question whether that narrative paints an overly simplistic picture.
“How many of these ‘repeat offenders’ are people cycling in and out of homelessness, addiction, and poverty?” asked Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, in a statement released last week. “Labeling someone a repeat offender without acknowledging systemic failure is not justice—it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Indeed, there is no public data yet on outcomes: Are people accessing treatment? Are they completing it? Are recidivism rates dropping? And perhaps, most crucially, are communities most affected by over-policing seeing improvements in health, safety, or stability?
The term “treatment-mandated felony” was repeated throughout the event as if it were a progressive innovation. Yet public health experts have long warned that court-mandated treatment—especially when tied to incarceration—is often ineffective and can produce worse outcomes than voluntary, community-based models.
“People need treatment, yes—but it has to be treatment they choose, not treatment under threat of prison,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, director of UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, in a February panel on addiction policy. “Otherwise, it’s just another arm of the criminal legal system.”
That distinction is key. Prop. 36 may open the door to treatment, but it walks that person through it in handcuffs. As with many reforms claiming to offer a “path to recovery,” the fine print matters.
One of the more telling features of the event was who was onstage—and who wasn’t. While senators, prosecutors, sheriffs, and retail executives all took turns praising Prop. 36, the voices of impacted communities—people with lived experience of addiction, homelessness, or incarceration—were notably absent.
Instead, major retailers framed the issue in terms of “accountability” and profits. “Retailers across the state are starting to see some progress and real accountability,” said Matthew Hargrove, President and CEO of the California Business Properties Association. “We need to keep momentum going.”
This close alliance between law enforcement and corporate interests is cause for concern among some watchdogs.
“We’ve seen this playbook before—when business leaders and prosecutors team up to define public safety, the people who end up in jail are almost always poor and disproportionately people of color,” said a policy consultant .
Supporters acknowledged that funding will make or break the law’s success. SB 38, authored by Senator Umberg, would make collaborative courts and treatment programs eligible for competitive grants. But whether this funding will be sufficient—or reach the areas that need it most—remains uncertain.
“These systems should obviously still be funded appropriately,” Umberg said. “The true cost will be in some smaller counties that need to get programs off the ground.”
Advocates warn that relying on competitive grants rather than dedicated funding risks further deepening regional disparities.
“We can’t build a statewide system on a patchwork of pilot programs,” said one critic. “Counties with fewer resources will be left behind.”
What’s ultimately at stake is whether California’s approach to public safety will be one of rehabilitation or retrenchment. Prop. 36 was sold to the public as a balanced response—one that holds chronic offenders accountable while also connecting them to help. But it remains to be seen whether the balance will hold.
“Calling something treatment doesn’t make it humane,” Brooks said. “We need to watch not just what this law does on paper, but what it does in people’s lives.”
As the state prepares to scale up implementation and as Prop. 36 continues to ripple through courts and communities, advocates, lawmakers, and residents alike would do well to look beyond the press releases—and ask whether what’s being built is a pathway to recovery or just another round in California’s long struggle with punishment and reform.
