Just short of a year of implementation, state and county officials alike say the long-term impacts of Proposition 47, which reduced low-level nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, remain to be seen, but speculation abounds. Where Prop. 47 supporters — 66 percent of Santa Barbara County voters approved it — argued fewer inmates who committed nonserious crimes would wind up in jail, law-enforcement officials worried offenders would commit more crimes without prison sentences as a deterrent.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, an unintended consequence of Prop. 47 is that there has been a 45 percent increase in the number of failure-to-appear warrants issued for offenders with citations. It was hard to say if the 45 percent jump was because of Prop. 47, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Mag Nicola. “It’s complicated,” Nicola said. Their “very old data system” does not distinguish between so-called new misdemeanors and old ones. Supervisor Janet Wolf requested the cases to be teased out when the matter returns to the board.
Of the 918 inmates currently in jail, 80 percent are felonies, and 20 percent are misdemeanors, according to the Sheriff’s Office. With that, Supervisor Steve Lavagnino expressed concern that defendants who were out of jail per Prop. 47 were not showing up for court. “I think it’s important that we know that number,” he said. “I am very interested to see what we see in November.” The California State Association of Counties is putting together a panel on Prop. 47 impacts to be held later in the year.