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California Assembly Bills Seek to Curb Retail Theft, Maintain Proposition 47

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A man stands outside in a blue business suit.
Speaker of the California State Assembly Robert Rivas on the State Capitol grounds in Sacramento on March 14, 2024. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

A handful of proposals to reduce retail theft in California cleared an initial hurdle at the state capitol on Tuesday, hours after Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and a bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled the legislation they touted as a sensible approach to curb shoplifting and commercial robberies in the state.

“The Assembly is moving forward a comprehensive, balanced, and bipartisan legislative package that seeks to strengthen public safety, protect shoppers and business owners across California and assure that we deliver real, visible, quality of life improvements to Californians,” Rivas (D-Salinas) said at a press conference in Sacramento.

The bills, which passed the Assembly Public Safety committee, include provisions to toughen penalties and make it easier for law enforcement to arrest and charge theft suspects. Taken together, they represent a bold and controversial legislative vision: that retail theft can be reduced without changing California’s landmark criminal justice reform act, Proposition 47.

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That ballot measure, approved by voters in 2014, has been the target of critics who say it’s led to a spike in property crime from luxury mall outlets to neighborhood pharmacies, though state data does not fully support this claim. Proposition 47 downgraded charges for low-level drug possession and property theft from felonies to misdemeanors. As a result, the state has saved hundreds of millions of dollars in prison and jail costs.

A KQED analysis of the measure and retail theft found that the arrest rate for shoplifting crimes has declined in the last decade. Many of the most high-profile and brazen robberies, meanwhile, are driven by organized crime rings and generally fall outside the purview of Proposition 47.

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“There’s no turning back the clock on the criminal justice reforms that have been enacted,” Rivas said on Tuesday. “For us, it’s understanding the root causes of this problem, which is complex, and for us, each one of these bills gets after those layers of complexity.”

Assembly Bill 2943, written by Rivas and Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Hollywood), would allow police officers to make an arrest for shoplifting without directly witnessing the alleged crime. It would also make it easier for law enforcement to aggregate multiple thefts into a felony grand theft charge.

“This bill says to organized crime rings, ‘We mean business, and we’re going to give law enforcement the tools they need to shut you down,’” Chavez Zbur said.

Rivas said the legislation was crafted with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who unveiled similar proposals earlier this year to curtail theft without touching Proposition 47, which would require approval from the voters.

But lawmakers may not have the last word on the fate of Proposition 47. Leaders of a campaign to roll back parts of the measure are expressing confidence that they will soon be able to submit the necessary signatures to put the issue on the ballot in November.

The measure, backed by large retailers and prosecutors, would create new felonies for repeated theft and toughen penalties for selling and possessing drugs. Supporters, which include the Democratic mayors of San Diego, San José and San Francisco, say the measure is needed to restore accountability and push drug users into treatment. Critics say its provisions will take the state back to over-criminalizing low-level crimes.

“While the proposed legislative bills are a step in the right direction, much more needs to be done to effectively hold individuals accountable and improve the safety of all Californians,” the campaign to repeal parts of Proposition 47 said in a statement.

Rivas said Tuesday that he would be “monitoring the progress of that initiative,” which proponents could remove from the ballot even after qualifying if they could negotiate a favorable deal with the legislature before July.

The bills unveiled Tuesday, however, further closed the door on the legislature proactively going to the voters to alter Proposition 47 this year.

That result was far from a foregone conclusion just three months ago when the legislature began its session. Hearings held by a select committee on retail theft that Rivas had created focused extensively on the effects of the ballot measure. Multiple moderate Democrats wrote bills to reverse pieces of the act. And Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), the chair of the Assembly’s Public Safety committee, said all potential solutions to retail theft were on the table.

However, after Newsom unveiled his proposals, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-North Coast) and Rivas soon followed suit and opposed changing Proposition 47.

Bills approved in the Public Safety committee on Tuesday included proposals to: expand the state’s existing retail theft law to cover merchandise stolen from cargo; allow a judge to place a restraining order on someone guilty of theft to prohibit them from returning to the retail establishment they robbed; and allow counties to enact a program allowing retailers to bring details of an alleged shoplifting directly to prosecutors without involving police.

Some advocates for criminal justice reforms voiced opposition to various provisions in the bill package — such as a bill to provide a sentence enhancement of up to five years when the property loss is more than $50,000 — but Tinisch Hollins, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, a group opposing the Proposition 47 rollback, applauded the overall direction of the Assembly bills.

“Rather than simply seeking to score quick and cheap political points, the package reflects a commitment to pursuing solutions that would reduce the incidents of theft in the first place while also underscoring the critical need for law enforcement to effectively solve crime when it occurs,” Hollins said in a statement.

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Meanwhile, the most punitive measures targeting retail theft have largely been derailed. A bill pursuing tougher consequences for Californians convicted of shoplifting was gutted before the committee hearing. AB 1772, authored by Assemblymember James Ramos (D-Highland) and supported by more than a half-dozen Democrats, initially asked the voters to add jail time for repeat thefts. It now seeks data collection on thefts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ramos’ office did not respond to questions about why the change was made.

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