Proposition 47: Background and Basic Facts

For decades, California has wasted billions on bloated prisons with high recidivism rates. In the last five years, reforms have emerged to reduce prison waste and prioritize smarter local approaches. The public strongly supports these changes. The most recent example is Proposition 47, which voters overwhelmingly passed into law in 2014 to change six low-level crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, applying the changes retroactively and reallocating the cost-savings from reduced incarceration to treatment, prevention and victim services. Read Full Factsheet