Proposition 36, which passed in November 2024, promised California voters a new era of “mass treatment” for people struggling with addiction and a crackdown on repeat petty thieves amid a spike in retail theft.
The debate around the measure, called “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act,” was fueled in part by a series of videotaped smash-and-grab robberies splashed across local TV news and images of unhoused residents shooting up drugs in the streets.
Voters signaled they wanted a crackdown and they approved Prop. 36 with nearly 70% casting ballots in favor of it.
A little more than a year later, the measure is getting mixed reviews.
Supporters say it's been effective in holding repeat offenders accountable. Critics say it's been a return to mass incarceration without the promised treatment for people with substance abuse.
How Prop. 36 works
Prop. 36 stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug offenders.
Here’s how the measure works: If you have been convicted of two misdemeanor thefts of $950 or less, prosecutors have the option of charging your third petty theft as a felony, which carries up to a three-year prison term.
Before Prop. 36, petty theft was a misdemeanor, regardless of how many times you did it.
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When it comes to drug offenses under Prop 36, if you have been convicted of two possessions of a small amount of hard drugs (fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine), prosecutors have the option of charging your third possession as a felony. But you don’t have to go to prison if you agree to go into drug treatment.
In 2025, California prosecutors filed more than 19,000 Prop. 36 felony drug cases and more than 15,500 felony theft cases, according to a study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice released in March. Most people were released on bail pending the outcome of their case.
Nearly 900 Californians have been sent to state prison under Prop. 36, since it went into effect in December 2024. County jail populations have grown by nearly 3,000 since the measure passed, driven by a surge in felony bookings of people who have not yet been sentenced.
In Los Angeles County alone, there are about 1,150 individuals in jail because of Prop. 36 — about a 9% increase in the jail population, according to county Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. The surge in defendants is adding caseloads to his already overworked attorneys, he said.
The same is happening across the state.
“This is really compounding the workload crisis,” said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association.
The data represents a reversal of yearslong declines in incarceration, and they are occurring amid all-time lows in California’s crime rate.
“It really is a return to mass incarceration,” Chatfield argued.
Black people overrepresented
Black people are dramatically overrepresented in Prop. 36 charges, according to the study. In Contra Costa County, for example, Black residents account for more than half of all Proposition 36 theft charges, despite making up less than one-tenth of the population.
Prosecutors say the law has been effective.
“It’s been a valuable tool to go after chronic and repeat thieves,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.
Hochman said his office brought more than 3,300 Prop. 36 felony cases against people charged with their third petty theft in 2025.
He said his office brought over 1,900 felony cases against people charged with their third possession of hard drugs.
He said he couldn’t immediately provide numbers on how many of the drug defendants opted for rehabilitation over prison.
Statewide, fewer than 1 in 5 people arrested on Prop. 36 drug charges have been ordered to treatment, and fewer than 1 in 100 have completed a program, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study.
Lack of treatment beds
One reason for the low treatment numbers is a scarcity of treatment beds throughout the state.
“There just isn’t enough treatment to meet the need,” said the center’s Maureen Washburn. “People aren’t getting connected to treatment. They aren’t succeeding in treatment programs once they’re in them.”
Treatment, a major promise of Prop. 36, has been an “abject failure,” she said.
Hochman agreed treatment is lacking.
“We do not have anywhere close to enough drug treatment and mental illness beds in a county of 10 million people,” he said.
The district attorney argued the state needs to provide more funding for treatment beds.
“Sacramento has not funded at any meaningful level,” he said.
In a March letter to the chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, the co-author of Prop. 36 — Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) — said at least $400 million dollars in new funding is needed for treatment facilities.
“I think spending taxpayer dollars on drug treatment — both in the short term and in the long term — is a smart way to address public safety issues,” Umberg told LAist.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested in his budget $100 million dollars for treatment over three years.
But Chatfield said people facing Prop. 36 charges shouldn't be locked up in the first place. Drug offenses should be handled as a public health issue, she argued.
“Even the low level misdemeanors for theft are economic crimes,” she said. “These are crimes of poverty.”
Unequal application of Prop. 36
In addition to a paucity of treatment beds, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study found charging rates vary dramatically by county. Orange County alone accounted for nearly 20% of Prop. 36 drug charges and 40% of theft convictions in 2025 despite representing just 8% of the state’s population.
“This inconsistency across counties exacerbates California’s longstanding problem of providing differing ”justice by geography,” the report stated.
Empirical evidence of the effect of Prop. 36 on the crime rate is lacking. But Umberg said he believes it has reduced retail theft.
“I have been told by a huge number of folks in law enforcement and also in the business community — particularly in the retail community — that it has had an effect on retail theft,” Umberg said.
Hochman said it's too early to tell if people are being deterred by Proposition 36.
“We’re waiting on statistics that we’ll probably get sometime this year to see if the deterrent aspect is also working — that we actually have fewer people going ahead and committing these crimes,” Hochman said.
But crime was on the way down before Proposition 36 passed. Violent crime fell 6% and property crime dropped 8.4% in California in 2024 — the year Prop. 36 passed.
Chatfield of the California Public Defenders Association maintains voters were “sold a bill of goods” on the measure.
“They were told this was about homelessness. They were told this was about treatment. And it absolutely was not," she said. "It was about increasing incarceration.”
