In summary
Californians voted to increase penalties for some crimes, reversing years of criminal justice policy changes.
Californians moved right on criminal justice for the first time in more than two decades, voting for sterner sentences on minor crimes.
Those changes are expected to reverse a trend of falling prison and jail populations — but proponents hope they will also reduce street crime and open-air drug use.
The 2024 retrenchment marks a startling reversal of more than a decade of criminal justice policy in California, which was premised on reducing incarcerated populations, spending more on treatment and saving state dollars along the way.
No more. Now, Democrats in the Capitol just watched voters and legislators steamroll past their proposals for a middle ground and instead line up behind Proposition 36, which increased penalties for some theft and drug crimes.
Meanwhile, California’s two best-known “progressive” prosecutors, the district attorneys of Alameda and Los Angeles counties, were recalled or defeated in an election.
The state’s top Democrats also lined up behind Proposition 6, which would have banned forced labor in prison and jails, and watched that measure fail.
To top off a bad year for California Democrats, the state’s former attorney general lost the 2024 presidential race.
Gov. Gavin Newsom spent the summer trying to reassure voters that the state was taking measures to combat street crime. He sent California Highway Patrol officers to work shifts in Oakland and directed National Guard lawyers to prosecute drug cases in Alameda County. Some locals were appreciative; others said the efforts were a mark of yet more overpolicing of communities of color.
Advocates for incarcerated people scored a couple of wins in the Legislature and in court. California is no longer withholding the money it is supposed to give people leaving prison at the time of their release. Hundreds of people who were sterilized in California prisons are eligible to appeal the denial of their requests for compensation.
2025 outlook
But California, with its harsher new laws and likely expanding incarcerated population, is looking at a big invoice in the future: The cost to imprison one person for one year in California hit a record of $132,860 in 2024.