Harris avoids commenting on California's tougher crime measures Prop 36 | US elections 2024

Kamala Harris dodged a question Sunday about whether she voted for California's Proposition 36, a controversial ballot measure that increases penalties for certain drug and theft crimes.

“I'm not going to talk about the vote on this because, frankly, it's the Sunday before the election and I have no intention of building support one way or the other,” said the US vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, who is voting in California, told reporters at a rally in Detroit.

As district attorney of San Francisco and later as attorney general of California, Harris' criminal justice record came under intense scrutiny. Her opponents said she has turned to criminal justice in the past depending on political circumstances.

If passed, Proposition 36 would require people who do not complete drug treatment to be incarcerated, increase penalties for some thefts and drug offenses – including converting misdemeanors to felonies – and require courts to incarcerate people convicted of selling or Those convicted of supplying illegal drugs to others must warn that if they continue to do so and someone dies, they will be charged with murder.

The California Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal and policy counsel said the measure will increase the state's criminal justice system costs because some people now serving their sentences at the county level will have to serve them in state prison, and it will increase the workload of state courts.

“Overall, Proposition 36 would increase local criminal justice costs, likely by tens of millions of dollars per year,” the advisory board said.

The measure has become a deeply contentious issue as major California cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, struggle to curb high rates of homelessness and drug addiction and the associated crime.

Beyond the ballot measure, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, is in a difficult re-election campaign against challengers who say she has allowed the city to spiral out of control.

The moderate Democratic mayor faces four primary rivals in the Nov. 5 election, all fellow Democrats who say Breed has wasted her six years in office. She is said to have allowed San Francisco to descend into chaos and blamed others for her inability to curb homelessness and erratic behavior on the streets while failing businesses begged for help.

Crime data shows the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Statewide, shoplifting rates increased over the same period but were still below pre-pandemic levels in 2019, while commercial burglaries and robberies have become more common in urban counties, the study said.

Proposition 36 also represents a rollback of a previous ballot measure, Proposition 47, which aimed to reduce prison overcrowding by reducing some felonies to misdemeanors.

Many law enforcement officials blame this 2014 initiative for the increase in homelessness and crime in the state.

Harris also declined to take a position on Proposition 47 in 2014 and reportedly laughed when asked if she would support legalizing marijuana for recreational use. She changed that opinion in 2018 and now says she believes “people shouldn't go to prison for smoking weed.”

“I just think we're at a point where we need to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior,” Harris said during an interview on the All the Smoke podcast last month.

The Los Angeles Times recently argued against the new ballot measure, saying it could return the state to the “three strikes and you're out” era, which saw repeated convictions for some relatively minor crimes and long prison sentences.

“The problems the measure purports to address — retail theft, drug abuse and homelessness — are to some extent related,” the paper said, adding that the proposal effectively asks voters to repeal the current one to agree to police tactics.

“Police could now stop petty thieves making misdemeanor arrests, as they can and sometimes should under current law. But they don’t do it because they argue it’s not worth their time,” the paper said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report