California voters seem to be edging toward voting for a prison reform measure that would reduce penalties for crimes like petty theft and simple drug possession.
A Friday poll found 51 percent of likely voters back Proposition 47, which eliminates felony sentencing for six crimes and makes them misdemeanors.
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The six crimes affected are shoplifting, bad checks of less than $950, theft of property, check forgery, and possessing drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, or cocaine for personal use, reports the Washington Post.
This would make California the first state to remove felony charges from all drug possession.
Reduced sentencing would save the state’s overcrowded prisons a great deal of money, which the proposition directs be spent on K-12 school programs and mental health and drug treatment.
The polling reflects a gradual move away from California’s harsher era of prison sentencing, particularly the“ three-strikes” law, which hiked prison sentences for anyone who had been convicted of two or more serious crimes or felonies. California has since modified the law so that a third conviction for a minor crime would not trigger life imprisonment.
Since the state changed the three-strikes law, 1,900 prisoners were released from life in prison, some of whom had been placed there for petty theft.
