Proposition 36 Has Already Led to Hundreds of Arrests in San Diego

Nearly two months after its passage, the impacts of Proposition 36 are already being felt in San Diego County. 

According to Sheriff Kelly Martinez, nearly 400 people have been booked in San Diego County jails on Proposition 36-related crimes. Of those people, about 115 remain in Sheriff’s custody. All of these arrests would not have happened had Proposition 36 failed.

And that’s likely just the beginning, Martinez said.

“We anticipate that number will increase over the next year because people are not going to be as likely to plea to crimes where they might have before because the ramifications [are] much more important,” Martinez said during a recent interview on the VOSD podcast. “Same with some misdemeanor offenses that if people plea to … will be stackable as a felony.”

Proposition 36 refresher: Voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36 in November, which promised to crack down on retail theft and hard drug sales by rolling back major parts of 2014’s Proposition 47. In the decade since its passage, critics of Proposition 47 blamed the measure for rising homelessness and the perception that crime had increased. 

That earlier ballot measure downgraded some drug and theft crimes to reduce populations at California’s overcrowded prisons. Proposition 36 institutes tougher penalties for the sale of drugs like fentanyl, allows prosecutors to stack multiple smaller thefts that total more than $950 and charge offenders with felonies and even creates court-ordered treatment programs for people convicted of drug offenses.

Sheriff’s take: Even as she warned that the county’s jails are badly overcrowded and in disrepair, Martinez said she supported Proposition 36 based on her hope that it’ll deter people from committing the kinds of crimes that are now subject to stricter punishments and that it will encourage more people to enter rehab. Martinez also thinks Proposition 36 has changed the sense of futility some business owners and law enforcement officers felt prior to its passage.

“There was clearly a sense of frustration by law enforcement when they went to a shop owner who had been the victim of another retail theft and hadn’t been reporting because they didn’t see a point,” Martinez said.

While those thefts were still misdemeanor crimes before the passage of Proposition 36, they weren’t ones that led to people’s arrests. That often meant those charged never showed up to court.

“Now they’re coming to jail and now they’re being given court dates and at least they’ll at least have to appear and we’ll see what happens from there,” Martinez said.

Jakob McWhinney | February 5, 2025 | Voice of San Diego

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