The California Shoplifting Law That Trump Says Is Too Lenient

As Donald J. Trump tests lines of attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, he has claimed that shoplifters in California are allowed to steal up to $950 from stores with no consequence — and that Ms. Harris is to blame.

Mr. Trump, the Republican former president, has increasingly focused on policies in California, Ms. Harris’s home state, as a way to portray her as too liberal for the national electorate and try to blunt her efforts to appeal to moderate voters. Ms. Harris, a Democrat, served as the San Francisco district attorney and the attorney general of California before she became a senator in 2017.

“You’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in New Jersey this month. “Has everyone heard of that? You can rob a store, and you have these thieves going into stores with calculators calculating how much it is. Because if it’s less than $950 they can rob it and not get charged. That was her that did that.”

Mr. Trump, who repeated the claim at a rally in North Carolina, was referring to Proposition 47, a landmark criminal justice measure that California voters passed overwhelmingly in 2014 to reduce penalties for some theft and drug possession crimes. The changes came as crime rates were falling in California compared with those of previous decades and as the state was being ordered by federal courts to reduce its prison population.

The measure established that shoplifters who steal $950 or less in goods can only be charged with a misdemeanor. Previously, prosecutors had the discretion to charge suspects with either a misdemeanor or a felony.

Harris Was Not Responsible for the Law

Mr. Trump has tried to pin the change on Ms. Harris, who was California’s attorney general at the time it went into effect. But she never publicly took a position on the measure, saying that she wanted to remain neutral because she was responsible for crafting the language of the summary and title of the measure that would appear on the ballot.

Some attorneys general in California have been accused of trying to sway the electorate by how they write the ballot language. But Ms. Harris’s language on Proposition 47 was seen as cautious and straightforward that year.

While the drafters of Proposition 47 called their measure “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” voters were presented with Ms. Harris’s more modest wording: “Criminal Sentences. Misdemeanor Penalties. Initiative Statute.”

“Her official summary and title was pretty innocuous,” said Jeff Reisig, the district attorney in Yolo County, a Democratic stronghold in the Sacramento Valley.

Shoplifting Is Still a Crime in California

Trump’s implication that the shoplifting of goods worth $950 or less is not a crime in California is false because such acts can be charged as a misdemeanor, carrying a jail sentence as long six months.

In practice, however, few people receive jail sentences in California for such crimes, said Mr. Reisig, a former president of the California District Attorneys Association. He explained that because of overcrowding, jail beds are usually reserved for felons or those awaiting trial on more serious charges.

The $950 felony threshold was set in 2010, when lawmakers increased it from $400 to catch up with inflation, said Magnus Lofstrom, policy director of criminal justice for the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was governor at the time and approved the increase. Proposition 47 did not change the amount, but rather how theft below $950 was treated by prosecutors.

While California’s $950 felony threshold for shoplifting has been held up as an example of leniency in a famously liberal state, it is actually the 10th strictest in the nation. States such as Republican-led Texas, Alabama and Mississippi allow even higher levels of theft before a felony is triggered.

One difference, however, is that many other states have laws that allow prosecutors to charge repeat lower-level offenders with felonies, Mr. Reisig said. In California, under Proposition 47, someone could steal multiple times and be charged only with misdemeanors, provided that each time the goods were worth less than $950.

Amid increases in shoplifting in California, a growing number of retailers have begun locking up household goods, forcing customers to ask a store employee to grant access to them. Many stores discourage workers from confronting shoplifters because of the safety risks and potential liability if an employee gets hurt.

Some retailers, big city mayors, sheriffs and prosecutors, including Mr. Reisig, have all blamed Proposition 47 for an increase in shoplifting, which last year was 28 percent higher than in 2019, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Efforts to Toughen Theft Laws

In November, when Californians vote for president, they will also consider a new initiative that would roll back aspects of the 2014 law. The ballot proposal, Proposition 36, would allow prosecutors to pursue a felony charge when someone has two prior misdemeanor shoplifting convictions. It would also allow a felony charge for drug possession, with the option of treatment, after two misdemeanors.

A recent poll shows the rollback measure is likely to pass.

Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has expressed frustration over theft in the state, telling a story this year about his disbelief watching a person steal items by walking out of a Target. But Mr. Newsom objects to the new ballot measure and signed a package of crime bills this month that he hopes could sway voters to reject the rollback of Proposition 47.

The bills Mr. Newsom signed make it easier to punish repeat offenders by allowing prosecutors to aggregate the value of multiple thefts to reach the felony threshold. They also take a tougher line on auto burglaries; allow stores to seek restraining orders against theft suspects; and target organized theft rings.

Proposition 47, along with other criminal justice changes that lowered sentences and allowed inmates to leave prison early for good behavior, responded to a Supreme Court ruling in 2011 that required California to reduce the populations of its overcrowded prisons, which had become a humanitarian crisis.

Since then, California’s prison population has fallen dramatically: Today, there are fewer than 100,000 people locked away, compared with a peak of more than 173,000 in 2007, according to Scott Graves, the budget director at the nonpartisan California Budget and Policy Center, which focuses on issues that affect the state’s low-income residents.

“We were building more prisons than we were building universities,” Mr. Graves said. “Policymakers were asking themselves: Is this how we should be spending our limited tax dollars?”