It has been six months since California’s Prop 36 — also known as the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” — took effect after voters overwhelmingly passed the measure in the November 2024 general election. Unsurprisingly, it took only half a year for the data to yield results that were eerily similar to those from stop-and-frisk laws in NYC, the so-called “war on drugs,” and, of course, the notorious federal crime bill of 1994.
Black people are being disproportionately targeted and harmed because we’re disproportionately poor and policed (and because law enforcement is inherently racist).
According to the Los Angeles Sentinel, “Prop 36 increased penalties for certain drug and theft crimes, reclassifying some as felonies, and lengthened sentences for specific offenses, particularly those involving multiple individuals or the sale of certain drugs.” The law appears to be a reversal of the state’s Prop 47, which voters passed in 2014, significantly lowering the penalty for non-violent petty crimes, including drug offenses and property crimes. Prop 47 reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors and downgraded penalties for nonviolent crimes like drug possession for personal use and the theft or receipt of stolen goods valued at under $950.
Prop 36 is basically saying: “Nah, throw all them people in jail.”
The bill had been sold as a way of addressing Californians’ concerns about rising theft and homelessness, but even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who initially opposed the legislation, according to the Sentinel, appeared to all but admit that the purpose of Prop 36 is to keep more prisons open by feeding them more prisoners.
“We are estimating that it would increase at a cost of over $130,000 per year (for each prison inmate),” said Newsom, who has allocated about $110 million in funding for Prop. 36 implementation. “That would put pressure on some of the other criminal justice reforms that have been proven very successful, and (Prop 36) would slow down the reduction of the total number of prison closures at a cost to the taxpayers.”
Ricardo D. García, the chief public defender for Los Angeles County, had a different take on Prop 36 and the rise in cases that the legislation has yielded.
Poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness are driving factors,” Garcia said.
“Prop 36 disproportionately hurts Black, Brown, and immigrant communities,” García said. “We are already under-resourced. Prop 36 and its treatment mandates are meaningless if there’s no bed, no place for someone to go to.”
Again, this is how “tough on crime” America has always operated. The “war on poverty” quickly becomes a war on poor people. The “war on drugs” becomes a war on drug addicts. And every war sold as a war on crime ultimately becomes a reason to target Black and Latino people disproportionately and, often, at random. (We call it racial profiling. They call it: “Well, they’re the ones who are committing all the crimes.”)
Now for the fun part. Let’s take a look at the data.
From the Sentinel:
According to a report by Voice of San Diego, via San Diego Census and San Diego Police Department, data shows that 32% of 374 people arrested for Prop 36-related drug or theft charges in the city from the middle of December through May were Black. Out of 1.9 million residents, Black people make up 5.6% of the city’s population.
Before Prop 36 became law, the L.A. County jails had a population of just over 11,000 inmates, but it quickly rose above 12,000, and reached over 13,000 in May, before falling to the “12,900 range” before the 4th of July holiday.
“We saw 12 arrests before Prop 36 on these types of offenses and since May of 2025, we are looking at 594 arrests,” García said.
According to the L.A. County’s Public Defender’s Office’s website, 700 attorneys are employed within 32 office locations. Garcia said each public defender has a case load, and Prop 36 is increasingly becoming a burden for the largest county in the state.
Yoel Haile, the Director of the Criminal Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California (NorCal ACLU), penned a commentary about the number of Prop 36 cases that are popping up in the Bay Area.
About 90% of the people from north Alameda County — Berkeley, Emeryville, and Oakland — charged under Prop 36 are Black, while Black people make up just 10% of Alameda County’s total population, according to Haile’s commentary co-written with Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods.
It has to be noted that Black people are disproportionately arrested for non-violent drug offenses despite the data consistently showing that Black and white people use and sell drugs at similar rates.
We also must pay attention to the language in Prop 36 that allows for stiffer penalties for the sale of “certain drugs.” Remember the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which made penalties for possession of crack cocaine far more serious than those of powdered cocaine? According to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the law “established a racially discriminatory 100:1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.”
“As a result of this legislation, for example, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, which was disproportionately consumed by African Americans, triggered an automatic five-year jail sentence — whereas 500 grams of powder cocaine, which was mostly consumed by richer, White demographics, merited the same punishment,” according to the report.
These racial disparities are never just cases of simple happenstance. By all indications, they happen by design.
This is America.
SEE ALSO:
Charlie Kirk Goes Full ‘Great Replacement Theory’ In Rant Against Anti-ICE Protesters In Los Angeles
Trump’s DOJ Investigates University Of California Over Effort To Recruit Racially Diverse Faculty
Prop 36: California’s War On Homelessness, Drug Addiction, And Theft Disproportionately Targets Black People, Data Shows
was originally published on
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