California voters will soon decide the fate of Proposition 36, weighing whether to roll back criminal justice reforms from a contentious 2014 ballot measure that lessened the penalties for some crimes including theft and drug possession.
If passed, Proposition 36 would walk back much of the decade-old Proposition 47, turning some theft misdemeanors into felonies, requiring a warning about a possible murder charge for selling or providing drugs , and creating a new “treatment-mandated felony,” according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office .
It’s likely to increase the prison population by around a few thousand people, the LAO says. At this time, there are about 90,000 people in state prison. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there were 170,000 people incarcerated in 2006.
On the state level, Proposition 36 would increase costs in two ways. Some people would be required to serve their sentences in state prison, rather than county prison, thus increasing the state prison population.