Ten Years After Prop 47, California Goes Full Circle And Starts Fighting Retail Crime

It's called blowback: several years after California passed Proposition 47, which reclassified felony theft offenses as misdemeanors and effectively greenlit shoplifting of items below $950, the retail industry had had enough, and the same state that idiotically tried to give minorities a back-handed reparation by encouraging their petty theft (with the tongue-in-cheek promise of not prosecuting it), the state has seen countless retailers flee, social cohesion collapse, crime explode and after a decade of Prop 47, the circle is complete as California just enacted a package of bills to fight the very same retail crime it initially encouraged.

As RetailDive reports, with governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of a package of 10 bills last week, California has a new suite of tools to fight organized retail crime and other property theft, while holding on to criminal justice reforms that the governor says have clamped down on recidivism and saved the state billions.

According to Newsom, the California Retailers Association was instrumental in developing the package and getting it to his desk, or, more accurately, a makeshift work surface set up at a Home Depot location in San Jose. CRA President Rachel Michelin, speaking alongside the governor and several other stakeholders, said work on the legislation was cooperative, but that the problem was brought to legislative leaders and law enforcement by retailers.

“We worked collaboratively. And I’ll say I was able to rethink the way I approach this issue, and I think I was able to have them rethink how they approach this issue,” Michelin said. “Retailers have never been about mass incarceration or that type of mentality. We’ve always wanted to be part of the solution.”

The new legislation tackles not just retail theft, but also other property theft and damage, including auto theft. Broadly speaking, related to retail crime, the law focuses on online marketplaces and repeat offenders, gives law enforcement and prosecutors more leeway and puts cargo theft in focus.

The National Retail Federation and Retail Industry Leaders Association, which have both focused on retail crime in recent years, declined to comment on the new laws, referring Retail Dive to the CRA.

Specifically, per a fact sheet from the governor’s office, under the legislation:

• Prosecutors can bundle the value of stolen property from different retailers or jurisdictions to reach the $950 “felony grand theft” threshold. Thefts and related offenses from different counties can be tried together.
• A person can be arrested for shoplifting even if an officer didn’t witness the act.
• Probation for shoplifting or petty theft is extended from one year to two.
• Courts can issue “retail theft restraining orders” that would ban anyone “convicted of organized retail theft, shoplifting, theft, vandalism, or assault of a retail employee from entering the establishment for up to two years.”
• Retailers can’t be cited or fined for repeated theft reports.
• Anyone “possessing more than $950 of stolen goods with intent to sell, exchange, or return the goods” now faces up to three years in jail, and prosecutors needn’t prove the defendants knew those goods were stolen.
• Sentencing is enhanced for “large-scale resale of property.”
• Online marketplaces must collect information on “high-volume third-party sellers.”
• The state’s existing organized retail theft law and its regional property crimes task forces, which were scheduled to sunset, were made permanent.
• Cargo theft, as related to retail crime, now includes railroads, according to Michelin. 

“All of these things in this package is going to help retailers, law enforcement and district attorneys be able to provide the consequences for the behaviors that we need to make sure people don’t continue doing this behavior, which is what we’ve always needed,” Michelin said.

The new legislation doesn’t go as far as Prop 36, a referendum that California voters will consider in November, in stiffening penalties for retail theft.

The detail gaining the most attention —and even some notoriety in the 2024 presidential election — is that California now categorizes thefts of goods worth less than $950 as misdemeanors.

And the punchline: Prop 36 would recategorize lower-level thefts as a felony for people with prior convictions and allow for more extensive prison sentences.