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Over the past decade, California has been one of the states most willing to embrace criminal justice reforms, but the outcome of this month's election is raising questions about whether voters are souring on some of these more progressive changes. From member station KQED in San Francisco, Marisa Lagos reports.
MARISA LAGOS, BYLINE: Jeff Reisig is a district attorney in California's Yolo County near Sacramento. He helped write Proposition 36, the ballot measure that overwhelmingly passed in California this month. The initiative increases criminal penalties for repeat thieves and drug users by rolling back portions of an earlier ballot measure, Proposition 47.
JEFF REISIG: Prop 36 was a modest amendment to Prop 47. It wasn't a total repudiation of all of the reforms. Prop 47 went too far, and this kind of brings it back to the middle.
LAGOS: Reisig doesn't see this moment as a return to the tough-on-crime laws that dominated California politics for decades. He notes that Prop 36 will allow prosecutors to offer drug treatment as an alternative to jail time for drug users. It's not the argument law enforcement and conservative politicians made for years against reforms. In 2020, they failed to pass a much more draconian rollback of Prop 47 that focused solely on incarceration, not treatment. Yale Law School fellow Emily Bazelon says, even in more conservative states, the public seems open to incremental changes to the justice system and to the idea that putting people in prison for long periods of time may not be the best way to improve public safety.
EMILY BAZELON: You have an alternative-to-incarceration program for vets passing in Nebraska, more parole eligibility in Mississippi.
LAGOS: Bazelon also notes that Colorado and Tennessee passed reforms this year, making it easier for people with felony records to get professional licenses for jobs, including construction work or cutting hair.
BAZELON: These are, like, relatively small-bore changes. It doesn't mean that you're throwing open the prison doors.
LAGOS: Voters in California and across the nation are concerned about public safety, but they also seem skeptical of returning to the mass-incarceration policies of the 1990s. That's according to Lenore Anderson, president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which pushes for criminal justice reform. She notes this year's California ballot measure campaign focused on getting people into drug treatment.
LENORE ANDERSON: The proponents of the campaign talked about mass treatment. They talked about a balanced approach to public safety.
LAGOS: But in California, it wasn't just Prop 36. Progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and Alameda Counties lost their jobs in the recent election. Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco says there are some through lines between Prop 36's passage and those DA elections. Voters want accountability for people who break the law.
SCOTT WIENER: People are deeply frustrated when they go into their Walgreens or CVS, and everything is locked up. They're frustrated when they see growing tent encampments on the street, and they want something to change.
LAGOS: Similar frustration has played out in Oregon, where a law recriminalizing drug possession recently took effect. But supporters say they hope the prospect of criminal charges will push people into treatment. It's the same bet supporters of Prop 36 are making in California - that the threat of jail or prison time will be enough to get people the help they need without a return to the harshest criminal sentencing policies of the past. For NPR News, I'm Marisa Lagos in San Francisco.
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