Growing concerns and headlines about crime have led California to consider rolling back some of its decade of reforms, specifically Proposition 47. This report sheds light on the impacts of Proposition 47 as the reform reaches its 10th anniversary, as well as the broad and deep impacts of the public health responses in the criminal justice system to the COVID-19 pandemic—it does not assess Proposition 36, or recently enacted or proposed legislation.
Potential reversals primarily aim to address a rise in retail theft, but they also address drug offenses; that is, the proposals seek to increase penalties for some property and drug offenses. Whether any of these efforts would achieve their goals depends on the contributing factors behind increases in some crime.
We examined whether certain factors have caused crime to go up: falling jail and prison populations, the lower likelihood of apprehension for property crimes, and fewer arrests for drug offenses. Our analysis looks beyond the years around Prop 47 to outcomes after the public health responses to the COVID pandemic. The latter is important, as the magnitude of the pandemic-induced impacts on incarceration and drug and property offense enforcement were mostly larger than those caused by Prop 47.
We find that lower clearance rates for larceny as a result of Prop 47 led to a modest rise in property crime in the reform’s first two years (clearance rates are the share of reported crimes involving an arrest and referral to prosecution, a measure that can be viewed as the likelihood of apprehension), with increases in theft of car accessories (3%, or roughly 40% of the overall increase of 3,600 thefts) and car break-ins (2.1%, or roughly 12% of the jump of 35,300 car break-ins).
Cars also increasingly became targets when incarceration and enforcement changed in response to the pandemic. Auto theft increased by 1.6 percent when jail populations fell, a fraction of the 32 percent statewide increase of about 41,000 auto thefts between 2019 and 2022. Lower clearance rates for larceny led to a much larger rise (7.3%) in car accessory thefts, like catalytic converters, but also represented only a small share of the overall increase of 89 percent (up by roughly 47,000 incidents). The decline in the larceny clearance rate also affected car break-ins, by 3.9 percent.
Importantly, we find no evidence that changes in drug arrests in the wake of Prop 47 or the pandemic led to any increases in crime.
Factors Contributing to Increases in Retail Theft
Property crimes related to retail theft are currently at the center of policy discussions in California. Our estimates suggest, however, that shoplifting decreased by 2.2 percent during the first two post-Prop 47 years, a surprising finding that may reflect that retailers are less likely to report this crime in jurisdictions with low larceny clearance rates—where reporting an incident may not lead to consequences. Also, as shoplifting is limited to incidents where the value of the stolen merchandise is $950 or less (defined by the state’s penal code as a result of Prop 47), law enforcement may instead report retail theft incidents where stolen merchandise is valued over $950 as commercial burglary, because these incidents can be charged as a felony second-degree burglary. The 3 percent rise in commercial burglaries as a result of Prop 47 drops in larceny clearance rates aligns with this theory, as do the notable and coinciding increase in the share of commercial burglaries that took place in the daytime.
To conclude that lower clearance rates did not affect retail theft, we need to assume that retailers’ reporting of shoplifting was mostly unchanged, even if consequences are increasingly unlikely. While weak evidence points to shoplifting rising (5.1%) after the prison population fell, this change was limited to 2015, the first year after Prop 47. Again, a lower number of actual shoplifting incidents getting reported in later years may be responsible. Unfortunately, given the lack of data that accurately, completely, consistently, and credibly captures retail theft incidents, it is impossible to reliably assess the role of Prop 47 on retail theft.
A stronger and broader impact on retail theft appears after the public health responses to the pandemic, using changes to commercial burglaries as our measure. When jail populations and burglary clearance rates fell, commercial burglaries rose by a combined 5.3 percent, representing roughly one third of the increase observed over that time. Some weak evidence also points to a 2021 rise in commercial burglaries tied to low clearance rates. Unlike Prop 47, we find no evidence of an offsetting impact on reported shoplifting incidents.
Looking beyond Incarceration
We do not find convincing evidence that lower incarceration after Prop 47 had a greater impact on crime (car break-ins being an exception) than realignment (Lofstrom and Raphael 2013). The even greater decreases of 45,000 inmates initiated by the pandemic also do not seem to have had any greater impacts on property crime than realignment or Prop 47 (up by roughly an additional 2,200 auto thefts and 1,600 commercial burglaries). While that is encouraging, we also note that our estimates do point towards some weak (only marginally statistically significant) evidence of impacts from decreases in the jail populations on violent crime (robberies and aggravated assaults) in 2021. Although this is far from strong and convincing evidence of a link between decreases in incarceration and increases in violent crime, the state has seen increases in these types of crimes since the pandemic, and further efforts to determine contributing factors are needed.
Efforts to identify evidence-based alternatives to incarceration, including addressing the continued decrease in law enforcement staffing, should be considered. Police staffing has a strong deterrent effect on crime, especially on violent crime (Chalfin and McCrary 2018). Other strategies that may prove effective include preventive interventions among at-risk youth, people with behavioral and substance use challenges, and other targeted groups. Importantly, efforts funded by the state prison savings may have countered some rise in crime and led to improved outcomes for offenders. Rigorous evaluation of these funded efforts and dissemination of those findings should be elevated and prioritized.
Prioritizing Decisions around Enforcement
Enforcement of property and drug offenses plummeted as a result of both Prop 47 and the pandemic; the likelihood of apprehension for a larceny fell notably as well, which led to moderate but broad increases in property crimes.
The Prop 47 reclassification of some property crimes from felony to misdemeanor may have contributed to lower arrest and clearance rates. For example, with some exceptions—such as so-called citizen arrests—arrests for misdemeanor property crimes like shoplifting have greater requirements than felonies: an arrest requires that the officer was present when a crime took place or has a warrant for the suspect’s arrest issued by a judge. Furthermore, adjusting the severity of some property and drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors may have influenced the priorities of criminal justice actors such as law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and the courts, as voters signaled that drug and property offenses should be viewed as less serious offenses that require different responses than before.
Similar signals were sent during the pandemic, although this time initiated by public health concerns, as the coronavirus presented serious challenges to criminal justice systems. State and local directives aimed at reducing the spread of COVID included reducing interactions between law enforcement officers and the public, as well as arrests and bookings (Premkumar et al. 2023).
Police officers’ decision and discretion plausibly reflects all of these factors. How to respond to a call for service, which investigations to pursue, and whether to arrest and book a suspect of a property crime all represent decisions on how to allocate limited resources, including time and energy. The decrease in law enforcement officers in California may have further required that more serious offenses receive priority. Disentangling how all of these factors affect law enforcement and their ability to solve cases is a much needed effort for the future.
The Unintended Consequences of Reform
Changes in enforcement and incarceration, whether as a result of Prop 47 or the criminal justice system’s responses to the pandemic, also may have had unintended consequences beyond impacts on crime. While Prop 47 saved the state $800 million on prison expenditures, which funded some substance use treatment, it may have led to lower participation in drug courts. If so, fewer individuals may have received and completed needed treatment for drug addiction. Experts have raised concerns that the incentive for participating and completing treatment through drug courts may have decreased when sentences shortened after some drug and property crimes were reclassified from felonies to misdemeanors; some evidence supports these concerns (Arnold, Benally, and Friedrich 2020). And while incarceration has dropped, the share of the inmate population with mental health needs has increased in county jails (Lofstrom and Martin 2023). Homelessness also may have increased. These are societal impacts that research has not yet examined closely.
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