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No, California Proposition 47 doesn't allow you to steal $950 in store items | Fact check

Joedy McCreary   Paste BN

The claim: California allows people to steal $950 worth of items from stores

An Aug. 24 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a TikTok video of people running out of stores with armfuls of merchandise.

“Wow!! We're allowed to steal up to $950 at stores in California because of PROP 47,” reads part of the post's caption.

It was shared more than 5,000 times in 20 days.

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Our rating: False

Shoplifting is a misdemeanor in California with punishments of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, according to the text of the measure. While the maximum sentences for some low-level thefts changed, they were not eliminated.

Measure made shoplifting a misdemeanor

The claim in the Facebook post is “absolutely false,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine, told Paste BN.

California voters passed Proposition 47 in November 2014. It downgraded many nonviolent offenses, including some nonviolent property crimes where the value does not exceed $950, into misdemeanors, according to the text of the measure.

It did not give shoppers a license to steal beneath that threshold, experts say.

Fact check: Illegal to stop retail theft in California? No, bill never proposed this

“What Prop 47 did was reclassify some low-level drug and property offenses as misdemeanors rather than felonies – still keeping them as crimes,” Kubrin said.

It established shoplifting as a misdemeanor and defined it as entering an open business with the intent to steal merchandise worth $950 or less. A conviction carries a punishment of up to six months in county jail and a $1,000 fine, according to its text.

Any other such entrance into a building with the intent to steal would qualify as burglary, according to the text of the measure. Second-degree burglary – which involves non-residential structures including stores and businesses – may be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony in what is called a “wobbler.”

In those instances, judges have the leeway to impose a felony punishment – up to three years in county jail – to someone convicted on a misdemeanor charge, Kubrin said.

“If there is some element of that crime that makes the judge uncomfortable, they can have it be a felony,” she said. “If there is a cause of concern, there is the ability to charge higher.”

Retail theft has been a major problem in California and across the country, and some law enforcement officials in the state have blamed Prop 47 for it.

But a 2018 study co-authored by Kubrin found the measure did not cause rises in homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery or burglary. It also could not determine if Prop 47 was the reason for moderate increases observed in larceny and motor vehicle thefts.

“What we have to conclude is that there was really no impact whatsoever on violent or property crime,” Kubrin said.

The proposition was passed as a response to concerns about overcrowding in the state’s prisons.

“The idea was, we don’t need to be clogging up our state prisons with very low-level offenders that can be better housed in our jail facilities,” Kubrin said. “And that will help reduce the overcrowding and also help the state with its finances.”

The state spends about $100,000 annually for each inmate in a prison, according to both Kubrin and the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Paste BN reached out to the social media user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

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