Eight years ago, Californians decided it shouldn’t be a felony offense to commit low-level shoplifting, possess drugs or commit other low-level theft offenses. Instead, they thought such crimes could be reasonably addressed with misdemeanor penalties carrying six months to a year in jail if prosecutors and judges really wanted that.

That’s the story of Proposition 47.

Yet, ever since, California Republicans, police unions and right-wing talking heads have made it a point to scapegoat Proposition 47 for everything (even non-Prop. 47 crimes, like smash-and-grab thefts and organized retail crime) and repeatedly insist petty theft and drug possession are decriminalized (I wish drug possession actually was decriminalized, but nope, it’s a misdemeanor).

Recently, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, proposed placing a measure to repeal Proposition 47 on the ballot for voters to decide. “Today we can make crime illegal again in California. The Legislature is taking up my bill to repeal Prop. 47,” tweeted Kiley when his proposal was scheduled for a committee hearing.

Last week, Kiley’s bill, Assembly Bill 1599, predictably went down in flames before the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee. At the hearing, Kiley put up his best effort, by telling the committee that his proposal wasn’t technically about repealing Proposition 47 but that it was merely about letting voters decide the issue. Blah, blah, blah.

The bill analysis is worth reading for anyone actually interested in the facts about whether or not Prop. 47 repeal is warranted.

For example, it notes a Pew Research Center study which found that, “raising the felony theft threshold in other states had no impact on crime; states that increased their thresholds reported roughly the same average decrease in crime as the 20 states that did not change their theft laws; and the amount of a state’s felony theft threshold—whether it is $500, $1,000, $2,000, or more— is not correlated with its property crime and larceny rates.

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The bill analysis also notes that California’s felony threshold for theft of $950 is actually low compared to most other states. Only 11 states have a higher threshold. Let me repeat that. Despite the fact that Prop. 47 critics routinely act like $950 is an absurdly high threshold, the vast majority of states have higher thresholds. In Texas, for example, the felony threshold is $2,500. In woke Alabama, it’s $1,500. California’s $950 limit is more conservative than Alabama’s or Texas’.

The bill analysis also notes that, “while Proposition 47 did reduce certain theft offenses to misdemeanors, there are still legal options for charging thefts that call for increased penalties.” It maps out ways that prosecutors can aggregate misdemeanor offenses to bolster penalties when they’re warranted.

“Repeated acts of theft can be aggregated and prosecuted as one felony if they are conducted pursuant to one intention, one general impulse, and one plan,” the analysis notes, as one example.

Of course, Republicans peddling gibberish about Prop. 47 like Kiley don’t care about pesky things like facts. In Kiley’s case, he’s running for Congress, which is what he always wanted to do, so he wanted to boost his “tough-on-crime” image with a proposal he knew was a waste of time. It’s the same reason Democrat Rudy Salas, who is also running for Congress, introduced an arguably dumber piece of legislation.

As usual, I recommend Republicans stop pretending it’s the 1980s, stop treating crime like it’s merely a political talking point and start engaging with the world as it is. Matters of crime and justice are serious matters that merit serious scrutiny and deliberate approaches.

Sal Rodriguez can be reached at [email protected]