2024’s Crime Propositions Expose the Blind Spot In Californian Exceptionalism
Image Description: A hand dangles the scales of justice over a windy Californian desert road whose outline is the shape of the state of California.
This past November, while national attention was laser-focused on the presidential election, Californians with any interest in our criminal justice system were keeping an eye on two propositions further down the ballot. They were Proposition 6, which would end forced labor in prisons, and Proposition 36, which would turn certain drug or theft-related misdemeanor crimes into felonies.
Proposition 6 failed, while Proposition 36 passed — both results were undesirable outcomes in the fight for true rehabilitation and a fairer justice system, and a pendulum swing backwards from a culture that, just one election cycle ago, seemed ready for a reckoning against carceral justice.
PROPOSITION 6
The ballot text of Proposition 6 is as follows:
“ELIMINATES CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION ALLOWING INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE FOR INCARCERATED PERSONS. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.”
Prop 6, colloquially referred to as the anti-slavery proposition by advocates and news outlets, sought to amend what many call the “slavery loophole” in California’s state constitution. Enslavement is illegal in California, but the constitution carves out an exception when it’s used as punishment for a crime, much like the country’s 13th Amendment.
As it still stands, incarcerated people in California can be made to work various jobs for less than $1 an hour, and turning down the assignments can result in consequences ranging from a write-up to denying parole. United States (U.S.) prisons, struggling to keep up operations due to overcrowding from mass incarceration, stand to benefit a great amount from this deal — it’s estimated that the use of prison labor saves them $9 billion a year.
However, this comes at a different cost. Those against Prop 6 may believe working in prison encourages a more stable return to society, when it often keeps incarcerated people from taking on work that could facilitate their personal and professional improvement. People serving sentences in California prisons report being unable to take more skill-based jobs or participate in rehabilitative programs, because the programs were scheduled at the same time as their required shifts of manual labor. For Time, incarcerated journalist Steve Brooks emphasizes that Prop 6 wasn’t about getting rid of working in prisons entirely, but about “having the right to choose where and how we worked.”
What was stunning about Prop 6’s failure was that on paper, all signs should have pointed toward its passage. Voters chose to end prison slavery in states with far more conservative constituencies, like Alabama, Tennessee, and Utah, and there was no formal opposition submitted against Proposition 6. So why didn’t California vote yes?
Most attribute the failure to a lack of information. The campaign for Proposition 6 was barebones, operating on a relatively shoestring budget of under 2 million dollars. When the Public Policy Institute of California asked likely voters which proposition they were most concerned with, Prop 6 ranked dead last (Proposition 36, meanwhile, was first).
There was also the absence of the word “slavery” on the ballot itself. The state’s attorney general’s office, which has the final say on the official ballot language, opted instead for the more euphemistic phrase ‘involuntary servitude.’ Advocates believe this was a critical oversight, since Nevada successfully voted to ban forced prison labor with language that explicitly referenced slavery in the very same election. All these factors might have led to an unclear proposition that voters either didn’t understand or hadn’t previously encountered — and when voters don’t feel like they understand what a ballot measure will change, they’re far more likely to vote against it.
The results are still devastating – and shameful, for a state claiming to be the beacon of progressivism – but the closer margin of Prop 6 and its complicating factors suggest that it might not be a lack of care preventing the end of slavery in California, but a lack of education. Transformative justice and anti-recidivism groups still plan to fight to get the measure on the next ballot, and a campaign to end slavery in all its forms could succeed with enough outreach.
The same can’t be said for California voters’ passage of Prop 36, which passed with an astounding margin of over two-thirds. Unlike Prop 6, Prop 36 was highly talked about and heavily funded.
PROP 36:
The ballot text of Proposition 36 is as follows:
ALLOWS FELONY CHARGES AND INCREASES SENTENCES FOR CERTAIN DRUG AND THEFT CRIMES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
Prop 36 is not as straightforward as Prop 6. In short, it repeals portions of Calif. Prop 47, a referendum passed in 2014 that turned certain non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Prop 47 also redirected funds from prisons into rehabilitation and prevention services, such as mental health and treatment facilities.
Under Prop 36, prosecutors can now charge repeat offenders of theft and drug-related crimes with felonies, revitalizing the spirit of the antiquated “Three-Strikes Law” from California’s tough-on-crime politics of the ‘90s. It also allows prosecutors to aggregate multiple unrelated misdemeanors together to charge someone with a felony. The measure was supported by most law enforcement groups, some of whom, like the Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies, seemed incredibly eager to start charging more people with these increased penalties in an 2024 interview with CapRadio.
Prop 36 punishes people with nonviolent drug offenses, even as it acknowledges many of those penalized will be struggling with addiction. The proposition features an option for “treatment-mandated felony”, which makes people charged with repeat drug use choose between completing 1-2 years of addiction treatment or serving time in prison. Some supporters of Prop 36 have tried to pass this aspect of the measure off as in alignment with transformative justice principles, but opponents disagree.
Studies show involuntary treatment fails to adequately treat those suffering from addiction. And, even if it did help, it’s unclear how judges are meant to send people to treatment programs, since Proposition 36 will explicitly take money away from these very same preventative treatment services that Prop 47 funded.
What does this mean?
In the immediate short term, the passage of Prop 36 will undo the trend of declining jail populations, and incarcerate more Californians. This makes it a costly measure, increasing the funding required to keep state prisons running. California jails are already burdened and ill-equipped to handle their current population, and many fear that the number of annual jail deaths is sure to rise with the passage of Prop 36.
By nature, Prop 36 will also turn more Californians into felons, a class of people who are barred from parts of public life even after serving their sentence. From being prohibited from voting to the frustrating struggle to find employment, housing, or licensing with a felony record, those convicted of felonies face an uphill battle when reintegrating back into society — a battle California seems to have no intention of ending. When you take into consideration Proposition 6’s failure to pass, that’s an even bigger pool of people that the state can legally exploit into slavery.
These effects won’t be felt equally. People imprisoned in California prisons are disproportionately Black people and Latino men. In terms of repeat arrests, data shows those with multiple arrests are disproportionately Black, low-income, or unemployed, and the majority of these arrests happen for nonviolent offenses — the kind that Prop 36 will reclassify as felonies. Marginalized demographics are most affected, and the expansion of incarceration and the practice of prison slave labor will only serve to exacerbate pre-existing inequalities in this state.
How does a state that claims to be one of the country’s last strongholds against conservatism pivot so far right when it comes to crime and justice? It’s not just this election’s propositions — California voters have recalled or ousted several progressive district attorneys in a sharp rebuke of the very same justice system reforms they were so strongly fighting for after the civil rights reckoning of 2020.
Some posit it’s a natural pendulum swing, that progressive criminal justice advocates simply tried to do too much too fast that the public wasn’t ready for. Others point to sensationalist framing of crime on social media, where outrage-inducing videos of theft and looting go viral and create a more heightened sense of danger than may actually exist.
Our unwavering commitment to upholding a carceral state no matter the cost suggests some cracks in the veneer of Californian exceptionalism. Our state, which still has the death penalty in place, is overly reliant on punishment as a response to any perceived transgression or disorder (see: the militarization of the police force against student protestors at this very campus last Spring). If the results of the recent election are any indication, we seem to want to lock more people out of our sight for more kinds of offenses. And once they’re in prisons, we don’t want to give them a real shot at transformation either, as shown by Prop 6’s failure.
CalMatters suggests that much of the decision-making around crime and justice is highly emotional, regardless of what the facts might be. In short, we’re motivated by a politic that capitalizes on our fear, and a desire for simple solutions to complex problems. When you hear about a crime committed in your community, you want to be assured that something like this will never happen again. The solution most frequently thrown in our faces is the prison system, despite the evidence that imprisonment does not successfully deter crime. It’s that fear running rampant that allowed law enforcement and prosecutors to inflate the threat of crime in California this past election cycle, despite crime rates still being far from California’s historic highs.
As frustrating as the hysteria around crime can be, it might suggest that an emphasis on education and outreach could help reject right-wing politics that rely on an inflated sense of danger. Californians are not unilaterally, cartoonishly punitive – we want to build a better world, and the facts validate that. Late 2024 polling shows that almost half of likely voters think the justice system should prioritize treatment and rehabilitation over harsher punishment, so it’s not surprising that the authors of Prop 36 had to dress up their intent in the language of rehabilitation for Californians to buy in. No group in this state was willing to publicly oppose Proposition 6, and it won nearly half the voters despite its campaign’s extremely limited reach.
To me, all this — that Prop 6 came so close, that state politicians are still resistant to being perceived as ‘tough-on-crime’ — means that, though we sorely need to do some self-reflection, there’s a chance for growth. On a personal note, I hope Californians dig deeper when they try to address what it really means to live in a crime-free society. I hope that we start thinking more critically about prevention, intervention, and meaningfully building safe communities — a conversation that doesn’t have a silver bullet or an easy answer — rather than continuing a cycle where we are constantly running back to a dehumanizing prison system to save us. We want to do better, but we haven’t been given the tools to know how yet. It’s of the utmost importance that we start building those tools now, because California hasn’t earned the right to call itself any kind of “progressive” safe-haven until and unless it can move away from its reliance on the carceral system.
