2d:null 2e:["$","title",null,{"children":"It costs $133,000 to imprison one person for a year in California. A group of prosecutors and businesses wants to incarcerate 65,000 more people, mostly for personal drug possession. They want us to pay for it. | Safe and Just | Observable"}] 33:T29ab,memo2=html`

A proposed ballot measure proposes sweeping changes to California law that amount to a new war on drugs. The measure would result in 65,00 more people incarcerated, 50,000 of whom would be incarcerated for drug offenses. The measure would cost taxpayers more than $4.5 billion each year in perpetuity.

This measure would incarcerate nearly 45,000 Black and Brown Californians, the vast majority of whom would be incarcerated for personal possession of drugs. Though much of the media coverage of this measure focuses on theft, 80% of its impacts are due to new and severe penalties for drug possession.

In addition to imposing billions of dollars in new costs related to incarceration, the measure would cut funding for existing programs that increase graduation rates in schools, provide treatment and support for victims of crime, and sustain California’s most successful efforts to reduce crime, combat homelessness, and increase employment.

The measure’s sponsors, who include some of the same people behind the 1994 “Three Strikes and You’re Out” initiative, have collected nearly one million signatures. The measure may be on the November 2024 ballot. If voters endorse it in high enough numbers, Californians would bear the costs of severe and racially disparate penalties, including for possession of drugs for personal use. This measure would

Cost taxpayers $4.5 billion a year, every year for the foreseeable future.
Shift funding from homelessness prevention, drug treatment, schools, and victim services to prisons.
Incarcerate 65,000 more people in California, 50,000 of whom would be incarcerated for drug possession. Nearly 35,000 more people would be incarcerated in state prisons, and more than 30,000 would be incarcerated in county jails.
Result in one additional person being booked into jail every 5 minutes, forever.
Cause 1.3 million new admissions to county jails over the course of 10 years.
Defund California’s most successful community-based programs that have been demonstrated to reduce homelessness and prevent crime.

You can explore the analysis in greater detail at this link.

These estimated impacts are based on marginal costs – meaning they reflect the real new costs taxpayers would bear. They are created from the best data available, which you can explore for yourself in the interactive impact estimator. This impact estimator is transparent about the certainties and uncertainties of the inputs that underpin these estimates and allows you to change the pre-populated inputs to modify the results. Informed people will of course make different assumptions where data are lacking. Yet all reasonable assumptions yield a clear result: 23-0017 A1 would cost California taxpayers billions of dollars each year and result in the incarceration of tens of thousands of people, the majority of whom would be Californians of color.

Defunds and Proposition 47 Savings Fund, taking funding away from homelessness prevention, drug treatment programs, victim services, and schools.

Policy Change	Impact	Cost Over 10 Years¹
Defunds programs operated by the Board of State and Community Corrections that provide homelessness prevention, drug treatment, diversion programs and more.	72,000 people will not be helped through effective crime prevention programs.²	$767 million cut to existing programs
Defunds school-based programs.	Approximately 100 school districts will see cuts to their school safety programs.	$295 million not spent on school safety and delinquency prevention.³
Defunds victim service providers.	125,000 victims of violence will encounter limited and reduced services at Trauma Recovery Centers.⁴	$118 million not spent on victim services, including Trauma Recovery Centers.

Increases incarceration for simple possession of drugs through the creation of a new type of drug felony.

Policy Change	Impact	Cost Over 10 Years
Turns possession of drugs for personal use after 2 convictions into a “treatment mandated” felony.	More than 56,000 people each year subject to court-ordered intervention.	$1.2 billion.⁵
Incarcerates people who do not succeed in treatment in county jail or state prison.	21,000 more people sentenced to jail. 14,000 more people in prison.	$1.5 billion in county jail expenses. $500 million in state prison costs.
Eliminates right to bail for people arrested for a treatment mandated felony and requires them to be held pending an individualized review.⁶	56,000 more people admitted to jail each year pretrial.	$75 million in county jail expenses. Additional unknown costs related to booking.

Establishes new mandatory minimum terms of confinement in state prison for possession of specified quantities of some types of drugs.

Policy Change	Impact	Cost Over 10 Years
New mandatory sentencing enhancements for people convicted of possessing a substance containing fentanyl.	9,700 more people in California prisons.	$350 million in state prison costs.

Imposes new mandatory prison terms for people who possess a gun while also possessing a substance containing fentanyl – regardless of whether a person knows a substance is contaminated with a trace amount of fentanyl.

Policy Change	Impact	Cost Over 10 Years
Imposes sentencing enhancement of two, three, or four years for people who are armed with a firearm while possessing a substance containing "any amount" of fentanyl.	4,000 more people in prison.	$100 million in state prison costs.

Increases incarceration of people convicted of low-level thefts.

Policy Change	Impact	Cost Over 10 Years
Eliminates right to bail for people arrested for a petty theft who have two related convictions and requires them to be held pending an individualized review.	22,500 more people admitted to jail each year pretrial.	$30 million in county jail costs.
Punishes petty theft with two related convictions with up to a year in county jail.	10,000 more people in county jails.	$780 million in county jail costs.
Punishes petty theft with three related convictions with up to two years in state prison.	5,000 more people in prison.	$184 million in state prison costs.

You can explore the analysis in greater detail at this link.

These estimates are based on the average Proposition 47 Savings from FY2021, FY2022, FY2023, FY2024 and FY2025.
This estimate is based on a reported 21,700 people receiving services over approximately three years. See BSCC, Prop 47 Grant Program: Cohort 2.
Eight-nine school districts have received funding through the first 4 cohorts. See California Department of Education, California Learning Communities for School Success Program, Funding Results, Cohort 1, Cohort 2, Cohort 3, and Cohort 4.
Twenty-four Trauma Recovery Centers currently receive funding through the Proposition 47 Savings Fund TRCs serve an average of 580 clients a year. See Sandy Felkey Mullins and Angela Hawken, Trauma Recovery Centers in the United States (2023).
The measure purports to fund this through the Proposition 47 savings program, but the costs are 12 times larger than the most recent savings.
This likely violates both the California and United States Constitutions. Defending this policy in court would likely cost the state additional millions of dollars.
The cost of incarcerating one person for a year in California was reported in Kristen Hwang and Nigel Duara, As California closes prisons, the cost of locking someone up hits new record at $132,860, CalMatters (January 23, 2024).

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