It\u2019s been nearly a year since Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure providing what backers called \u201cmass treatment\u201d for those facing certain drug charges. But few defendants have found a clear path to recovery under the law, according to new data released by the state.<\/p>\n
Prop 36 gave prosecutors the ability to charge people convicted of various third-time drug offenses with a so-called treatment-mandated felony, which would give them a choice between behavioral health treatment or up to three years in jail or prison. If they accept, they would enter a guilty or no contest plea and begin treatment. Those who complete treatment have their charges dismissed.<\/p>\n
In the first six months since the law took effect, roughly 9,000 people have been charged with a treatment-mandated felony, according to the first-of-its-kind report released this month by the state\u2019s Judicial Council. Nearly 15% \u2014 or 1,290 people \u2014 elected treatment.<\/p>\n
So far, of the 771 people placed into treatment, 25 completed it.<\/p>\n
The data reflects how different counties are using the law, with the highest number of treatment-mandated felonies charged in Orange County at 2,395. Kings and Napa counties each had one such charge.<\/p>\n
San Diego County accounted for roughly one-third \u2014 or 427 of 1,290 \u2014 cases in which defendants chose to pursue treatment, but did not report how many were placed into treatment or completed it.<\/p>\n
The report notes that this missing data contributes to \u201ca substantial portion of the drop-off\u201d in regard to the overall number of people who elected treatment but have not yet been placed.<\/p>\n
Francine Byrne, director of criminal justice services at the Judicial Council, said counties are still figuring out how to implement the law \u2014 and in many jurisdictions, it can take people a while to opt-in to treatment as they move through the court process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not acceptable that so few people are actually going into treatment,\u201d said Jonathan Raven, an executive at the California District Attorneys Association, which supported the measure. \u201cThe goal of this ballot measure was to take that population of people who have a substance use disorder and get them help, find them a pathway out of the criminal justice system and dismiss their cases. And that doesn\u2019t seem to be what\u2019s happening across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raven said that district attorneys have been trying to implement Prop. 36 based on the will of the voters, but have been doing it \u201cwith one hand tied behind their back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The measure did not include dedicated funding when voters passed it, which was one of the reasons why Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed the measure. Behavioral health experts have long sounded the alarm over the lack of behavioral health treatment and staffing across California, but proponents argued that Prop. 36 would be the great \u201cforcing function\u201d for the state to scale up treatment.<\/p>\n
Since the law passed, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers requested upwards of $600 million annually to implement it. Newsom and the Legislature ultimately approved a one-time state budget allocation of $100 million.<\/p>\n
On top of that, Newsom last month announced that the state had awarded $127 million in grant funding to build more behavioral health treatment capacity. Those funds were made available through Proposition 47, a 2014 voter-approved measure that reduced the penalties for certain non-violent drug and property crimes and stipulated that the resulting savings would be used for, among other things, substance use disorder and mental health treatment.<\/p>\n
None of that funding was available during the time period associated with the report, which looked at case counts between Dec. 18 and April 30.<\/p>\n
Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, said the data proves that Prop. 36 \u201cis a fail\u201d \u2014 not because people are treatment resistant but because treatment is not available.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no indication that anything will change,\u201d she said. \u201cMeanwhile, proponents are spending precious county resources on prosecution and incarceration in local jails and saying \u2014 magically \u2014 some money will appear for treatment. Proponents are the ones preventing those resources from being spent on treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been nearly a year since Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure providing what backers called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5125,7,9,8,724,5123,4110,5122,5121,5124],"class_list":["post-4351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-behavioral-health","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-criminal-justice","tag-drug-charges","tag-funding","tag-mass-treatment","tag-proposition-36","tag-treatment-mandated-felony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}