Voters overwhelmingly pass crime, homelessness crackdowns

At the ballot box Tuesday, voters in traditionally liberal strongholds overwhelmingly approved crackdowns on crime and public disorder.

Ballot measures tackling homelessness and boosting penalties against drug possession and other low-level crimes passed with large majorities in California and Arizona. In major cities across the country, voters rejected liberal district attorneys known for their reform-minded policies and approaches to sentencing.

During the campaign season, Americans heard competing campaign claims about whether their cities were getting safer or more dangerous, with conflicting data exacerbating the confusion. Former President Donald Trump railed against growing disorder and violence, pointing to the National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual survey of a nationally representative sample that captures crimes not reported to police. That survey found instances of violent victimization rose from 16.5 per 1,000 U.S. residents in 2021 to 22.5 in 2023.

But FBI figures told a different story—at first. In September, the FBI released data estimating that, overall, violent crime in the United States declined by 3% last year. But then the agency quietly altered its crime numbers for 2022, RealClearInvestigations reported. The new data, which added thousands of murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults, showed that violent crime rose 4.5% in 2022, contrary to the agency’s prior claims that violent crime declined that year. The edit caused some experts to wonder whether the agency’s data for 2023 is also incomplete. Year-over-year comparisons were already shaky since the FBI switched its reporting system in 2021, and some major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, initially didn’t contribute data.

Still, even if national-level data painted a better picture, it didn’t reveal much more “because crime is such a hyper-localized phenomenon,” said Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “Even if national crime trends were to say that overall crime is down, what’s happening on the south side of Chicago is still absolutely important.”

On Tuesday, California voters resoundingly approved the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act to combat a surge of smash-and-grab robberies in their state. The New York Times reported that more than 70% of residents voted yes on the measure, also known as Proposition 36.

The measure reforms another ballot initiative, Proposition 47, that voters approved in 2014. It lowered simple drug possession and petty theft under $950 to misdemeanors in an effort to cut back corrections expenses. WORLD spoke with local officials earlier this fall who said that measure took the teeth out of the law. The misdemeanor charges often amount to little more than a citation, and offenders often fail to appear in court. The ensuing shoplifting spree financed illicit drug use, the authors of the new reform measure noted, and, in turn, exacerbated homelessness. Unsheltered homelessness skyrocketed 51% during the past 10 years.

“The idea is that there’s this epidemic of drug addiction that’s driving so much of this retail theft,” said Stephen Eide, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute. The measure also incapacitated drug courts, which could no longer leverage the threat of significant jail time to spur people into treatment, he added.

Proposition 36, which voters approved on Tuesday, doesn’t roll back Proposition 47 entirely, but proponents say it gives local officials an essential tool to motivate addicts to seek treatment and move homeless people inside. Most notably, the measure creates what’s called a treatment-mandated felony. Courts may now charge third-time drug possession or shoplifting offenders with a felony, but if the individual completes a drug rehab or mental health treatment program, the court will wipe the conviction from his or her record. The new category of punishment is based on the idea that “we need to structure incentives in the criminal justice process to encourage people to give treatment a shot,” Eide said.

But Eide is skeptical that courts can effectively implement the measure on the mass scale that Proposition 36’s authors envisioned. The treatment-mandated felony is modeled after drug courts or mental health courts, typically small programs that use the threat of jail and a personal relationship with the presiding judge to convince people to seek treatment.

“The court process really can only handle so many of these cases, especially if you want the courts to do it … with real integrity and competence,” Eide said.

Still, the measure’s passage revealed voters’ frustration with a decade of leniency toward low-level crime. “This idea that there can be entire categories of crimes where you just won’t be punished if you commit them isn’t good for communities,” said Smith, with the Heritage Foundation. “It isn’t good for businesses, and it isn’t good for the quality of life anywhere where these crimes have not been prosecuted.”

In Arizona, voters also asked their local officials to take a tougher approach to public disorder and were set to approve Proposition 312 by a wide margin as of Wednesday morning. So far, about 58% of voters, according to The New York Times, voted for the measure, which allows property owners to apply for property tax refunds for damages incurred as a result of local officials’ failure to enforce public nuisance laws against public drug use and illegal camping, among other things.

The proposition originated as a reaction to a sprawling homeless encampment in downtown Phoenix dubbed The Zone, where roughly 1,000 people set up camp blocks from the state’s capitol building. Despite pleas from nearby property owners and businesses, the city neglected to clear the area.

“We really had this kind of horrific front-row view of what happens when, essentially, the city decides to just not enforce nuisance ordinances in an area,” said Jenna Bentley, the director of government affairs for the Goldwater Institute. She works in Arizona’s capital and helped draft the bill that referred Proposition 312 to the ballot. “It became very dangerous, and for the homeowners who were living in this area, they were kind of just left to their own devices,” she said.

The Goldwater Institute and a group of affected property owners sued the city for fostering a public nuisance and ignoring its responsibilities. The Arizona Court of Appeals ordered Phoenix to clear The Zone, which city officials did last November. But property owners did not get restitution for property damages or business lost as a result of fewer customers frequenting the area, Bentley noted. And “nothing is stopping the city of Phoenix from allowing another Zone to happen,” she added.

That’s where Proposition 312 comes in. Now, property owners may present the receipts for damage expenses, such as the cost of installing fences or security cameras, to the Arizona Department of Revenue and request a property tax refund if their city “follows a policy pattern or practice of declining to enforce existing laws” and “maintains a public nuisance.” If the municipality refuses the refund request, the property owner may challenge the denial in court, forcing the city or town to demonstrate that its actions are lawful or that the refund is unreasonable.

Cities up and down the West Coast have taken a more aggressive approach to clearing encampments in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that upheld a public camping ban in Grants Pass, Ore. Bentley argues Proposition 312 will compel Arizona cities to take more prompt action against homeless encampments and prevent drawn-out legal battles.

“Regardless of what side of the aisle you are, regardless of what you think the answer to the homeless crisis is, I think everyone kind of recognized that what happened in The Zone was bad for everyone, and that’s what we want to avoid,” she said.

But opponents of the measure, among them the Arizona Housing Coalition, argued the measure is “a Band-Aid, not a solution” and worried the measure could financially strain city governments, diverting funding away from efforts to address the underlying causes that land people on the street in the first place.

Regardless of how the measure changes the city’s approach to clearing encampments, the Phoenix Rescue Mission told WORLD that personal relationships and consistency that will motivate individuals to seek shelter and pursue the help that they need. The organization serves Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and is home to almost 9,500 homeless men, women, and children. Members of the mission’s outreach team seek out homeless individuals under overpasses, in canals, and behind gas stations and invite them to join one of their residential programs where they address the addiction, chronic poverty, and abuse that contributed to their homelessness.

“Our work never changed because the need has always been pervasive,” Phoenix Rescue Mission spokesman Sean Little said. “It’s that consistency over time, letting them know, ‘There is a place for you,’” he added.

Meanwhile, early results indicate that Maricopa County voters reelected incumbent county attorney Rachel Mitchell, who, since she was appointed in 2022, has prioritized cracking down on organized retail theft and fentanyl trafficking while criticizing the Biden administration’s border policy. Mitchell’s challenger, Democrat Tamika Wooten, pledged to refocus the county on prosecuting serious crimes and prioritize alternatives to incarceration—a message that failed to resonate with voters.

Elections in other big cities favored tough-on-crime alternatives to lenient prosecutors. In Los Angeles County, for instance, residents overwhelmingly ousted District Attorney George Gascón, known as the “godfather of progressive prosecutors,” in favor of challenger Nathan Hochman. Hochman positioned himself as a law-and-order candidate, promising to “restore the purpose of the district attorney’s office” and “vigorously prosecute” lawbreakers.

“That certainly represents a kind of shift that we’re seeing in the politics of DA races,” Eide with the Manhattan Institute said of Gascón’s loss.

The pushback against “rogue prosecutors,” a term coined by the Heritage Foundation’s Zack Smith, was already sweeping the country before voters hit the ballot boxes on Tuesday. In San Francisco, where residents recalled liberal prosecutor Chesa Boudin in 2022, early results showed incumbent Brooke Jenkins ahead of challenger Ryan Khojasteh, a former prosecutor under Boudin also known for prioritizing rehabilitation over punishment. Earlier this year, voters in Portland, Ore., unseated Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. They passed the mantle to Nathan Vasquez, who said he would focus on implementing a new state law that decriminalizes small amounts of illicit drugs.

A similar story played out in Alameda County, Calif., where initial counts show voters recalled District Attorney Pamela Price, who argued the county was overusing enhancements to toughen sentences and incarcerating too many people.

On the other side of the country, Florida voters rejected one of two attorneys whom Gov. Ron DeSantis previously suspended due to lenient sentencing and their failure to enforce state law. Former Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren and Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell sought their old jobs back, but voters affirmed their governor’s decision to keep Warren out of the office while welcoming Worrell back.

The widespread swing toward tough-on-crime candidates may also reflect increased Republican investment in local races after years of losing to prosecutors backed by liberal donors, most notably, investor and philanthropist George Soros. “It is very hard to keep track of the spending on DA races nationwide because of the complexities of state campaign finance records and databases, but there seems to be much more spending in opposition to Soros-backed DA candidates,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, told the Washington Examiner.

“You’re increasingly seeing voters getting fed up and frustrated with their local elected leaders who are not doing their jobs,” said Smith, with the Heritage Foundation. “I think as people now understand the role of the DA and how the DA’s policies affect their day-to-day lives, you’re starting to see citizens and voters pushing back against many of these policies.”