Black San Diegans Disproportionately Arrested On Prop. 36 Charges

By Alina Ajaz, Tessa Balc, and Lisa Halverstadt, the Voice of San Diego

June 30, 2025

In the initial six months after San Diego police started enforcing Proposition 36, Black San Diegans were disproportionately affected by the new state law.

Police data shows 32 percent of 374 people arrested for Proposition-36 related drug or theft charges in the city of San Diego from mid-December through May were Black, a community that makes up 6 percent of the city’s population. Disparities were consistent for both drug and theft charges.

Black San Diegans were also disproportionately arrested more than once on Proposition 36 charges, making up 40 percent of those with a second offense.

San Diego police say they work to minimize disparities but argue that those tied to Proposition 36 may be spurred in part by a concentration of enforcement downtown, which has a large homeless population that’s also disproportionately Black.

Community leaders and advocates who opposed Proposition 36 say the early data shows their concerns about the law, which increased penalties for repeat drug and theft offenses, were merited. They say the early numbers echo past disparities in policing and prosecution, particularly among communities already overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

“It is depressing. It’s extremely unfortunate but it’s not surprising,” County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said.

A person’s belongings on the street in downtown on Dec. 10, 2024. / Ariana Drehsler for Voice of San Diego

Her certainty about this outcome inspired her outspoken opposition to the statewide measure. She argued voter-approved Proposition 36 would lead to racial disparities and create long-term safety and economic challenges for communities caught up in it, and thinks that’s already playing out.

Other local officials, including Mayor Todd Gloria and District Attorney Summer Stephan, supported Proposition 36 last year as a way to crack down on repeat offenders, they said were slipping through the cracks.

Under the new law, people convicted of specific drug-related felonies can be referred to substance use treatment instead of jail or prison. But as Voice of San Diego reported last month, few of the hundreds of offenders arrested on Proposition 36 charges were linked with treatment in the first four months the measure was in effect.

Advocates say the new law revives an old pattern: targeting poverty and addiction with aggressive enforcement while offering limited pathways to recovery or support.

San Diego police acknowledged the racial disparity among Proposition 36 offenders but said structural factors, not the law or enforcement tactics themselves, may be to blame.

In a statement, San Diego police Capt. Charles Lara wrote that a police department analysis showed about a third of his department’s hundreds of Proposition 36 arrests happened in the 92101 ZIP code, an area that includes downtown and has a large unhoused population.

Voice did its own analysis of arrests in the downtown ZIP code and found that 35 percent of the department’s Proposition 36 arrests happened downtown. Of those, 45 percent were of Black San Diegans.

“We don’t have specific data on whether (Proposition) 36 arrestees were homeless, but anecdotally, we see a connection,” Lara wrote. “Black residents are disproportionately represented in San Diego’s homeless population, contributing to disparities in law enforcement contact.”

Lara said police have expanded their homeless outreach efforts and are working more closely with service providers to try to move more homeless residents off the street.

Askari Abdul-Muntaqim, a post-conviction advocate and organizer with San Diego-based Pillars of the Community, argued the police department’s argument shows Proposition 36 is criminalizing poverty by focusing enforcement in downtown areas where homeless people of color are concentrated. \

San Diego Police Department officers walk toward the San Diego Public Library in the East Village on Dec. 10, 2024. / Ariana Drehsler for Voice of San Diego

“Those are political choices,” Abdul-Muntaqim said. “You choose where you’re going to do enforcement.”

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the demographics of the San Diego police arrests but wrote in a statement that it believes Proposition 36 is being enforced equitably.

“In the short time the new law has been in effect, it has already diverted dozens of people into treatment,” the District Attorney’s Office wrote in a statement last month. “We have confidence that countywide, the law is being applied based on the crimes committed and not the individuals committing them.”

Claire Simonich, associate director of criminal justice nonprofit Vera California, which opposed Proposition 36, argues the data shows otherwise.

“We knew from both the history of the war on drugs and the research that we had conducted around retail theft arrests that Proposition 36 was very likely to result in the exact racial disparities that you are seeing,” Simonich said.

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