California voters lined up solidly behind Proposition 36, the ballot measure aimed at stiffening penalties for serial theft and fentanyl trafficking, doing well in countless polls heading into Election Day that showed over 70% support for the initiative.

Early results showed a margin of support of nearly 3 to 1. The earliest votes cast Tuesday night were mostly from mail-in ballots.

Proposition 36 was created in response to the public’s growing frustration with organized retail theft and serial theft, which have become highly visible since the pandemic through viral videos on social media and ubiquitous media coverage. The measure also targets the trade and possession of fentanyl, which has come to embody the deadliest dimensions of the nation’s opioid epidemic.

The initiative calls for an amendment to the state penal code to circumvent the $950 threshold that separates petty theft, a misdemeanor, from grand theft, a felony. The distinction is important because a felony arrest usually involves a stiffer prosecution in court and a higher likelihood of jail time, while a misdemeanor often ends with a citation and on-the-spot release.

Supporters of the initiative said current policies have left law enforcement toothless in pursuing serial theft, arguing that criminals can stay out of jail and court with impunity as long as the theft is below the threshold. The amendment would make any theft a felony if the offender has two or more prior theft convictions.

Under Proposition 36, fentanyl-related crimes would be subject to harsher penalties, including mandatory prison terms for those convicted of selling fentanyl and other hard drugs while armed and potential felony charges if the drugs they sell lead to a death by overdose. Additionally, those arrested for possession of fentanyl and similarly classified drugs would be eligible for “treatment warrant” felony charges, which would place them in a new drug court infrastructure and present them with a choice enter rehab — their charges are dismissed upon completion — or spend up to three years in prison.

The sentencing changes for theft and drug offenses marked a rollback of part of Proposition 47, the 2014 voter-approved law that established the monetary threshold and reclassified low-level theft and drug charges from misdemeanors to felonies. I support this initiativewhich included the state’s leading civil rights groups and Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosensay he helped California depopulate its prisons to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order and shift crimes caused by homelessness and drug addiction out of prison and into rehabilitation and mental health treatment.

And while homelessness is mentioned in the official title of Proposition 36the ballot language has no provisions that directly address the issue. The architects of the new law argued that a multitude of theft and drug crimes are fueled by homelessness, and therefore a more aggressive response to these crimes will move a significant number of homeless people off the streets and into treatment and rehabilitation programs.

How the changes will be paid for remains to be seen: Proposition 36 does not attach any funding source for the changes it proposes to institute. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said in an analysis of the bill that the new law would raise state costs between “a few tens of millions of dollars” and “in the low hundreds of millions of dollars” by increasing the prison population.

Critics say this highlights an understated impact of the new law: eroding revenue for mental health and drug treatment programs, which is tied to the amount of savings the state calculates by diverting people from prison.

Questions about the state’s rehab capacity also remain if Proposition 36 is working as intended and adding a flood of people into the treatment pipeline. Proponents and critics have argued over whether there are enough treatment beds to handle even the existing flow of people on the court-ordered treatment queue; the state’s largest counties are already on lockdown, which has meant that people are being held in jail specifically because there is no space available for them.