Of Madalaine Elhabbal

Press room in Washington, DC, November 8, 2024 / 16:10

On Election Day, California voters overwhelmingly approved a “tough on crime” ballot initiative to overturn a state law that reclassified a number of crimes as felonies.

The initiative’s success represents voter opposition to the excesses of an “unjust” progressive criminal justice reform movement, according to Catholic scholars interviewed by CNA.

Proposition 36 passed by a landslide of 40 percentage points in the state of California as of November 7th. Unofficial elections result showed that Proposition 36 would have passed with 70.2 percent of the vote as of Friday.

The amendment makes the theft of items valued at $950 or less a felony, rather than a misdemeanor, in cases where “a person has two or more prior convictions for certain theft offenses (such as theft from shop, burglary or car theft).”

The proposal also elevates drug possession from a misdemeanor to a “treatment-mandated crime,” which requires those convicted of drug-related charges — specifically fentanyl, heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine — to complete treatment and be off charges or face incarceration.

According to a local SFGATE reportsupporters of Proposition 36 raised about $16.8 million to pass the measure, while opponents raised about $7.7 million. Retail stores such as Walmart, Home Depot and Target were the biggest financial backers of the amendment, according to LA Times.

The latest measure reverses Proposition 47, a ballot initiative passed in 2014 that reduced penalties for theft and drug offenses in an attempt to avoid overcrowding in the state’s prison system.

right Public Policy Institute of Californiaafter the 2014 proposal went into effect, shoplifting crimes accelerated to their highest rates since 2000. recent study from the Manhattan Institute also found a 10.5 percent increase in chronic drug offenders since Proposition 47.

Correcting a “deformity”

“Proposition 47 was a distortion,” Charles Nemeth, professor and director of the criminal justice department at Franciscan University of Steubenville, told CNA, explaining that the “so-called reforms” passed through Proposition 47 “created chaos and undermined – true criminal justice. system.”

Reform initiatives like Proposition 47, he explained, are “incompatible with our notions of what justice is in both the Catholic and even the Aristotelian context.” Nemeth, who is also director of the university’s Center for Criminal Justice, Law and Ethics, emphasized that true criminal justice reform must “always keep the principle of proportionality in the light.”

“For every act, there must be a consequence. And a lot of the so-called reforms that have taken place in criminal justice have thrown the concept of proportionality under the bus and replaced it with individual claims and individual rights that are rooted in disproportionality,” he told CNA.

“One of the things that I teach at Franciscan constantly to our students about criminal justice policy, it has to support the common good,” he said. “It’s not a matter of individual rights all the time. It is also the social and common good of any society or nation-state.”

The imperative of responsibility

Nemeth said Californians took to the ballot initiative so easily because they recognize the idea that “when we don’t hold people accountable and they don’t have any personal responsibility, you wreak havoc on societies and cultures.”

In the year leading up to the election, California Governor Gavin Newsom strongly advocated against the ballot initiative, according to the local. rEPORTSstating that “Proposition 36 is taking us back to the 1980s, mass incarceration; promotes a promise that cannot be fulfilled.”

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The governor also argued that Proposition 47 saved taxpayer dollars by reducing incarceration for theft and that many counties in the state would be unable to provide mandatory treatment.

Public safety is “a very small expense” in California’s “finite” state budget, according to Lance Christensen, vice president of the California Policy Center, who told CNA that the state has historically spent less than 10 percent of its budget on jails and prisons statewide and closer to 5% to 7% in recent years.

“If cost is an issue, then let’s talk about the budget, but that’s not the issue,” Christensen said. “The problem is the government doesn’t want to put people in jail for being criminals.”

“There is one essential function of a state government and that is to protect the people,” he continued. “If you can’t actually protect people, what are you doing and what are you spending your money on? The idea that they’re trying to save money for public safety in prisons is just garbage.”

Nemeth described the California governor’s prioritization of progressive reform centered on social justice as “deaf to what the general population wants and experiences.”

“(Newsom) doesn’t understand the ravages of crime in the communities where these initiatives take place,” he observed. “It’s not just a commercial question or a business question — it’s also the safety and integrity of people neighborhood by neighborhood.”

Nemeth also pointed to the results of local elections in the state, which saw the mayor of San Francisco and the district attorney of Los Angeles disappointed. People are starting to “rise up” against the “madness”, the criminal justice expert said.

“All these things are so-called reform initiatives that destroy the common good and the collective peace of citizens. Ultimately, citizens rise up against it because it produces unfair systems,” he said.

Nemeth told CNA that he hopes that in the future other states that have passed similar criminal justice reform measures will “come to their senses” and reject decriminalization. He said states like New York, which also made theft of $950 and less than a misdemeanor, made a “total mistake” in adopting policies “completely inconsistent with the Catholic doctrine of personal responsibility and guilt”.

Madalaine Elhabbal is a staff reporter for the Catholic News Agency based in EWTN’s Washington, DC bureau. She has been published by CatholicVote and has also worked as a language assistant in France. She is a graduate of Benedictine College.