Prop 36 proponents promised safety, accountability, and mass treatment. California’s getting more mass incarceration instead.
One year ago, California voters passed Proposition 36, a ballot measure sponsored by retailers including Target, Walmart, and Home Depot, as well as the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (representing prison guards) and California District Attorneys Association.
In dubbing Prop 36 the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act,” proponents promised California voters mass treatment. Yet sponsors did not include funding for the measure, provide new revenue to cover increased costs, or address what would happen should treatment be unavailable — a glaring oversight in a state where 22 of 57 counties report having no residential treatment facilities. So instead of more treatment, data from the courts and public defenders across California show mass incarceration on the rise.
- Minimal treatment, mounting sentences. Available data from the Judicial Council shows only 771 people have been ordered into treatment under Prop 36, out of a reported 8,895 cases. The number of people for whom a treatment option is actually available is almost certainly lower, and the availability of quality treatment is minimal.
- In Sacramento County, just 270 of roughly 900 Prop 36 drug cases were referred to treatment — after 90 days, only 20 percent of those people remained in treatment, a program that lasts more than a year.
- Our preliminary analysis of Amador County data shows average sentences for drug possession cases increased dramatically post-Prop 36, even as overall sentence lengths in the county decreased. Dismissal rates for drug possession cases also dropped significantly.
- Racist consequences. Under Prop 36, Black people are being targeted, arrested, detained, and charged at far higher rates than white people.
- In Los Angeles County, Black people make up 23% of Prop 36 bookings, despite being only 8% of the population. The disparity is worse for repeat theft: Black people are represented at almost four times their county population representation (31% compared to 8%).
- Justice by geography. Each law enforcement agency and DA is applying Prop 36 differently, producing stark differences in how California’s most vulnerable populations are being treated by the justice system. Smaller rural counties (fewer than 200,000 people) file Prop 36 drug felonies at roughly twice the state average. Justice by geography is not justice at all.
- Orange County residents (just one-twelfth of the state’s population) make up more than one in four of the state’s drug felonies under Prop 36 — they face three times the risk of Prop 36 drug charging compared to the average Californian.
- Growing jail and prison populations. The number of people in jail and prison in California has been steadily climbing since the implementation of Prop 36.
- Prop 36 is increasing the LA County jail population during one of the deadliest years on record for the jails. The CIO’s September snapshot shows 837 people in jail whose top charge is a Prop 36 charge – this population has been increasing steadily since January, when there were 100 people in the system with a Prop 36 charge as their top charge.
- Threats to immigrants. Prop 36’s treatment-mandated felony is still a conviction for immigration purposes, carrying one of the harshest consequences under federal immigration law as a drug offense. It is exacerbating the crisis of family separation, deportation, and immigrant detention, even when someone never spends a single day in jail.
The attached fact sheet contains preliminary data analysis from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Californians for Safety and Justice, and researchers at UC Berkeley, drawn from public defender offices across 12 counties. Next month, the Vera Institute of Justice will also release a report looking at the implementation of Prop 36 in Los Angeles County from one year of booking data.
“”In L.A. County alone, more than 3,000 charges have been filed under Prop 36 — yet so many of the people we serve are still waiting for the treatment they were promised. The failure isn’t theirs; it’s ours as a system,” said Ricardo D. Garcia, LA County Public Defender. “Prop 36 held out hope for care and recovery but delivered little more than words. There are no guaranteed beds, no stable funding, no consistent coordination with providers. What people do find instead are new arrests, more jail time, and punishment for relapse. That isn’t reform. It’s abandonment dressed up as progress.”
“Carceral spaces are not the answer to the health crises the nation is facing. Jails were never meant to be hospitals,” says Branden C. Sigua, senior policy advocate for the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. “Common sense dictates that when people are sick, you take them to healthcare professionals. Policies that send people to jail to deal with health issues are not just immoral — they are indefensible.”
“Prop 36 was an artificial solution fueled by fear and sold to voters as “tough love.” In reality, it’s a repackaged war-on-drugs approach to substance use, mental illness, and poverty that will continue to criminalize and devastate communities,” said Summer Lacey, director of Criminal Justice and Police Practices at the ACLU of Southern California. “One year in and the data confirms what community advocates predicted: more arrests of Black and Brown people, minimal access to treatment, and critical funding stripped from programs that actually help people stay on their feet. Instead of making our communities safer, Prop 36 punishes poverty and addiction while pretending to offer help. Real safety comes from proven solutions like investing in housing, mental health care, community-based drug treatment, and other services that help people get the support they need, not harsher punishment dressed up as care.”
“Prop 36 is straining our community and state budgets in a time of unprecedented financial uncertainty, without improving community safety or public health,” said Claire Simonich, associate director of Vera California, a local initiative of the Vera Institute of Justice. “Prop 36 is exacerbating the very public health and safety problems it purported to address, removing funding from proven, effective programs and services like substance use and behavioral treatment and supportive housing. As California faces tough financial choices, it must invest in solutions that work — healthcare, services, and treatment — not just more punishment and mass incarceration.”
“Prop 36 is eroding safety and justice in California,” said Maureen Washburn, senior policy manager for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “Over the past year, it has siphoned tens of millions from effective Prop 47 treatment programs, created stark differences across county justice systems, deepened racial disparities, and failed to make good on its central promise — getting people into treatment.”
“Prop 36 is taking us backwards — cycling people through jails instead of getting them into treatment,” said Cristine Soto Deberry, executive director of Prosecutors Alliance. “It’s yet another reminder that real safety comes from policies that actually invest in our communities, address root causes, and create meaningful second chances.”
“California has a large, proud immigrant population — it is home to more immigrants than any other state. Prop 36 is harming our communities and fueling the jail-to-ICE detention and deportation pipeline,” said Merle Kahn, senior contract attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “All Prop 36 adjudications, even those that are not supposed to be convictions, are convictions under federal immigration law. Green card holders and other noncitizens who are charged with Prop 36 crimes are being placed in deportation proceedings, often subject to mandatory detention and mandatory deportation. This is true regardless of the person’s ties to the U.S., how long they have been living here, or the harm to their families. Individual circumstances often cannot even be considered by the immigration authorities if they are charged with a Prop 36 crime. Families are being torn apart, employers are losing valued employees, and entire communities are being destroyed by Prop 36.”
Trip Eggert is the Senior Communications Strategist for the Vera Institute of Justice
