California voters chose harsher sentencing and tough-on-crime prosecutors this week in overwhelming numbers, the Intercept reports. Proposition 36, a bill that upgrades a raft of petty theft and drug crimes from misdemeanors to felonies, was approved by 70 percent of voters in the initial counts. It is designed to incarcerate thousands more people by reversing a ballot measure passed 10 years ago, Prop 47, which downgraded theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in response to massive prison overcrowding. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles County, reformist District Attorney George Gascón lost his reelection bid to a former federal prosecutor, who ran on a tough-on-crime campaign. And in Alameda County, voters decided to recall another reform-minded district attorney, Pamela Price, after two years on the job. News outlets, experts and elected officials have been quick to frame the election day results on crime as a clear sign that California voters want to undo the criminal justice reforms of the past decade. “The pendulum of public opinion has swung back,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.
But advocates and organizers in criminal justice reform reject the idea that voters are shifting to the right. They instead point to the well-funded, corporate-backed campaign behind Prop 36 that distorted facts, and the complicity of media outlets eager to paint a picture of an unsafe California and echo the fear mongering that became central to Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. “All of this was avoidable,” said Lex Steppling, an organizer with Los Angeles Community Action Network, who has been a part of previous successful campaigns against state crime bills and opposed Prop 36. “I don’t want anybody acting like this is just an organic social phenomenon, it’s not. People feel insecure because they’re one paycheck away from having to leave their house, people feel insecure because goods and cost of living has doubled — that is a lack of safety, right? And it’s easy to tell people to blame that on the wrong people for the wrong reasons.” And on the defensive side, some say Democrats and criminal justice organizations themselves failed to mount an opposition campaign until months before election day. Police and prison guard groups have tried to roll back Prop 47 multiple times since its passage in 2014, but none have been as well-funded as this year’s Prop 36. Retail giants Walmart, Target, and Home Depot poured more than $17 million into the campaign, whereas the opposition only raised about $6 million. For months, the Prop 36 campaign ran ads presenting the bill as a way to address the fentanyl crisis and make both businesses and consumers safer by putting people committing low-level property crimes behind bars.
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