Cal Voices' Thoughts on Prop 36

Here's what you need to know:

• Prop 36 is a ballot initiative backed by retail chains, like Walmart, and police officers’ unions. It would undo criminal justice reforms that voters passed in 2014 under Prop 47. https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/understanding-proposition-36/

• Prop 47 reduced sentences for some non-violent drug possession or theft crimes and used the savings calculated from reduced incarceration each year to fund mental health and drug treatment, services for victims of crime, and more. https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=36&year=2024

• Prop 36 re-enhances sentences, defunding Prop 47’s investments in behavioral health. https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=36&year=2024

• Prop 36 also creates a “treatment-mandated-felony” program for drug possession that has no funding for the “no cost” treatment a court must order, leaving only the Mental Health Services Act as a source of funding. Prop 36 at Health & Safety Code section 11395(d)(2). https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/10/prop-36-mass-treatment/

• The proponents of Prop 36 offer no data to show that increasing punishments for drug possession or petty theft deters crime or reduces recidivism, particularly for persons with substance use disorder disabilities. https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_36,_Drug_and_Theft_Crime_Penalties_and_Treatment-Mandated_Felonies_Initiative_(2024)



• Prop 36 stigmatizes and negatively stereotypes people with mental illness, asking those accused of “treatment-mandated-felonies” to accept undefined “mental health treatment” in order to avoid incarceration, when the alleged crime was not connected to mental illness. Prop 36 at Health & Safety Code section 11395(d)(ii). https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_36,_Drug_and_Theft_Crime_Penalties_and_Treatment-Mandated_Felonies_Initiative_(2024)

• Prop 36 follows a familiar pattern of criminalizing mental illness, but for persons with substance use disorders: hundreds of millions of dollars will be siphoned into prisons and jails while funding for treatment and services dwindles, and access to treatment and services occurs only after a medical condition is implicated in a crime. In total, Proposition 36 would increase state criminal justice costs, likely ranging from several tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars each year (annually). https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=36&year=2024

• Prop 36 is exactly the opposite in spirit and policy of what persons with mental illness have fought for decades: we do not want to be criminalized and then offered treatment and services as a form of probation. We want our needs for housing, adequate income, and accessible, high-quality voluntary treatment met without police or courts.

Questions?

If you have any other questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact us at info@calvoices.org.