
When Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced this past week that his office had filed over 1,000 felony theft charges under Proposition 36, he framed it as a righteous crusade against retail crime.
“The days of impunity are over,” he declared, invoking language meant to soothe business owners and strike fear into repeat offenders. But behind the tough-on-crime posturing lies a deeper truth: Hochman’s embrace of Prop. 36 is not about restoring safety—it’s about resurrecting the failed policies of mass incarceration.
The problem isn’t that retail theft isn’t real. It is. Businesses deserve to operate without being targeted, workers deserve safety, and communities deserve thoughtful solutions. But Proposition 36 is not that solution—and the budget fight unfolding in Sacramento right now lays bare just how hollow Hochman’s rhetoric really is.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s refusal to fund Proposition 36 enforcement in his May budget revision is telling. His decision, as covered in the Vanguard this week, signals something important: while the voters passed Prop. 36 last November—lured by a misleading ballot framing that equated repeat petty theft with serious violent crime—the administration knows that the bill’s implementation carries serious fiscal and human costs.
The courts will now be flooded with low-level cases elevated to felonies. Jails and prisons will fill up. The public defender system, already stretched thin, will buckle under the weight. And all of this will happen while doing little to actually prevent crime.
And yet, Hochman is moving full steam ahead.
It’s worth recalling what Prop. 36 actually does. It allows petty theft under $950—formerly a misdemeanor—to be charged as a felony if the person has two or more prior theft convictions. This turns shoplifting offenses that might have been punished by a fine or short jail term into felony charges carrying potential prison sentences. It’s a classic “three strikes” escalation, dressed up in the language of accountability.
Unfortunately, policies like this don’t make us safer. They make us poorer, more unequal, and more reliant on incarceration as a one-size-fits-all response to social breakdown. And Hochman’s press release all but confirms that this is the direction he wants to go.
It reads like a victory lap, listing defendant after defendant, citing their criminal records, and treating jail time as the measure of justice. But nowhere in the announcement is there any discussion of whether these individuals had access to housing, mental health care, addiction services, or stable employment. There’s no mention of trauma, poverty, or systemic failure. In Hochman’s eyes, their pasts are pretexts for present punishment. Their context doesn’t matter. Only their rap sheets do.
This is not a vision of public safety—it’s a machine of retribution and a blueprint for mass incarceration.
Worse, Hochman’s office is now distributing 10,000 retail theft “warning decals” to businesses across the county, as if plastering windows with prosecutorial slogans will somehow substitute for actual community engagement, economic investment, or meaningful crime prevention.
Compare this with the budget reality in Sacramento. Lawmakers are being forced to choose between funding schools, healthcare, and housing—or pouring money into a system that will lock people away for stealing socks or toiletries.
And for what? Hochman’s own office admits in its press release that it’s prosecuting people like Matthew Murillo, who had 11 prior felony arrests and 34 bench warrants—many related to homelessness and minor offenses—and was sentenced to 16 months in county jail for theft at a Walgreens.
That’s not smart justice. That’s warehousing human beings.
This isn’t a progressive critique. It’s a data-driven one. Study after study shows that longer sentences for low-level property crimes do not reduce recidivism. What does reduce recidivism? Stable housing. Supportive reentry programs. Mental health treatment. Access to work. In other words, the very things that are being defunded while Hochman ramps up felony filings.
And then there’s the racial and economic impact. Proposition 36, like previous iterations of “three strikes” laws, will disproportionately affect Black, Brown, and unhoused residents. It will deepen the criminalization of poverty in communities already over-policed and under-resourced. Hochman’s office can point to organized retail theft rings—and some of the cases in the press release do involve serious charges—but the vast majority of Prop. 36 charges will not target high-level criminal conspiracies. They’ll target the desperate and the dispossessed.
If Hochman were truly committed to stopping organized crime, he wouldn’t need Prop. 36. Law enforcement already has tools to investigate and prosecute large-scale retail theft operations. What Prop. 36 adds is a blunt instrument—a legal weapon to hammer people who steal repeatedly, yes, but who often steal out of desperation, addiction, or mental illness.
This isn’t theoretical. We’ve seen this movie before.
California’s prison population exploded in the 1990s and early 2000s because of policies just like this. “Three strikes” laws filled prisons with nonviolent offenders serving life sentences. Billions were diverted from education, public health, and housing. Communities of color bore the brunt. And it took decades of organizing, lawsuits, and voter-led reform just to begin unwinding the damage.
Hochman is dragging us backward.
In a moment when voters are anxious about crime, it’s easy for politicians to offer simple solutions. It’s easy to say: “We’re cracking down.” It’s harder—but far more responsible—to say: “Let’s invest in people before they fall through the cracks.” Hochman is choosing the easy path, the punitive path, the politically convenient path.
But make no mistake: Proposition 36 is not a course correction. It is not precision justice. It is the return of the old war on crime, dressed in new clothes.
Governor Newsom’s budget decision shows the limits of the state’s willingness to fund this regression. But it’s up to the public—and especially Los Angeles residents—to push back on Hochman’s narrative. We must ask: who does this policy protect? Who does it punish? And what kind of society are we building if our only answer to poverty and pain is a jail cell?
If the goal is to restore public trust, we need solutions rooted in dignity, prevention, and equity—not in press releases that treat incarceration as victory.
Nathan Hochman may believe that mass prosecution equals safety, but we’ve seen this playbook before and it leads us right back to mass incarceration.
The man is following the law. The one that was passed by the voters.
Seems like that is what he should do.
Like Davis has to follow the law and vote in coucilmembers in districts, despite it making no sense for this town?