Editorial: Retail theft hearings scapegoat Proposition 47

Razor blades are locked up behind a glass showcase at a CVS store in Woodland Hills to fight shoplifting.

Dec. 21, 2023 5 AM PT

Three lengthy state hearings on California retail theft since mid-November have so far established that policymakers don’t understand why shoplifting and smash-and-grab robberies have increased since 2020. Or even whether they really have increased.

The retail industry recently admitted that it had been playing fast and loose with claims of monumental assaults on stores by crime rings. The National Retail Federation previously said that of the $94.5 billion of merchandise that went missing from stores in 2021, half the losses were due to organized retail theft. Actually, the federation said in an updated report this month, it was probably only about 5%.

Walgreens previously reported that it was closing five stores in San Francisco because of retail theft losses. But it, too, sheepishly updated its statement to acknowledge that the stores were closing for other reasons based on corporate decisions made well before the alleged retail theft spike.

In both cases, the industry admissions confirmed reporting in 2021 in The Times and elsewhere that the original numbers were inflated.

The unreliability of data about theft did not, however, stop some lawmakers and law enforcement and retail industry representatives at Tuesday’s hearing by the Assembly Select Committee on Retail Theft from zeroing in on a “solution”: Roll back key criminal justice reforms by turning misdemeanor shoplifting into a felony.

Never mind that shoplifting is a petty theft that is very different from the smash-and-grab robberies that frighten away customers and dominate TV news programs. Those frightening, high-profile crimes are already felonies because of the high value of goods taken and the damage to stores during the invasions.

Nevertheless, it seems state lawmakers will push for legislation early next year to ask voters to bring back “petty theft with a prior” — a long-defunct statute that allows prosecutors to charge a second shoplifting misdemeanor as a felony, meaning a year in jail rather than six months.

Never mind that prosecutors can already get the same result from simply adding up the six-month terms of each misdemeanor charge. Why don’t they do that? All Yolo County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Raven could tell members of the state Little Hoover Commission, which is conducting its own hearings on retail theft, was: We just don’t.

Petty theft with a prior was eliminated by Proposition 47, the 2014 criminal justice reform ballot measure that police tend to blame for all of society’s ills. Soon after its passage, critics targeted its removal of felony charges for simple drug possession. But polling showed that the easing of drug crimes was Proposition 47’s most popular reform, so the rollback pressure shifted to the $950 line that divides petty theft, a misdemeanor, from grand theft. Surely it was that change from the previous $400 that ramped up crime in California?

But California’s threshold is lower than in most other states, so it can’t possibly account for higher theft increases here. Besides, the threshold had already been raised by legislation signed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010, so it couldn’t account for increases in crime after the passage of Proposition 47 four years later.

In fact, increases in shoplifting and smash-and-grabs didn’t really register as a crisis at all until after 2020. Can we think of anything that happened that year that might have affected human behavior? Something other than a change to sentencing laws many years earlier?

That brings us to Tara Riceberg, who turns out to be the star of the retail theft hearings so far. Testifying before the Little Hoover Commission on Nov. 16, the Beverly Hills gift store owner recounted how a customer demanded a discount or else she’d just take the goods without paying at all.

“Empathy levels are dropping in this country,” Riceberg told the commission, adding: “Once COVID hit, I feel that was really the point of transition.”

She’s right, of course. We’re dealing with anxieties and social breakdowns set in motion by the pandemic, lockdowns, violent protests and a persistent nastiness in political discourse. None of this is related to the length of sentences of people convicted of petty theft.

Riceberg was insistent that jail is not the answer. There must be alternative sentencing, she said, like community service, to end repeat offenses. In fact, few people (other than police) speaking at any of the hearings demanded more jail, but they had little to offer other than rolling back some part of Proposition 47 — which would mean longer sentences.

Would stiffer terms stop repeat offenses? They could easily do the opposite, by filling more jail cells and erasing the savings that currently fund the state’s most effective recidivism reduction programs.

The reason for the savings that fund those anti-recidivism programs?

Proposition 47.