California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently discussed how he had to defend his state’s $950 threshold for grand theft after a Target worker unknowingly blamed him for a shoplifting incident.
Speaking earlier this month at a press conference on a mental health proposition, Newsom said he was recently about to check out at a Target when he saw a man walk out of the store without paying. As he checked out, a Target cashier who did not recognize him informed the governor that the man was “just walking out,” according to Newsom.
“I said, ‘Well why didn’t you stop him?’ She goes, ‘Oh the governor,’” Newsom recounted. “The governor lowered the threshold, there’s no accountability,” the worker said, per Newsom.
“That’s just not true. I said, ‘We have the 10th toughest — $950 — it’s the 10th toughest in America.’ She doesn’t even know what I was talking about,” Newsom responded.
Under California’s Proposition 47, which passed in 2014, stealing anything worth less than $950 constitutes a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
According to World Population Review, the majority of states have a felony theft threshold between $1,000 and $1,500 — the average across the U.S. is $1,184. New Jersey has the lowest threshold in the country at $200, followed by Illinois and New Mexico at $500. The highest, $2,500, is found in Texas and Wisconsin.
Misdemeanors generally result in less than a year in jail, community service, fines, rehabilitation, and/or probation, while felonies result in at least a year in prison. A felony can also affect someone’s ability to rent or buy housing, apply for a job, and vote.
In 2022, a police reform advocacy group Campaign Zero launched a "Raise The Threshold" effort, arguing that low threshold dollar amounts for felony convictions result in “overly harsh sentences and contribute to the mass incarceration crisis in this country,” also disproportionately affecting communities of color.
The organization noted that many states haven’t raised their felony threshold in decades. According to Pew Research, recent changes to thresholds in some states “reflect not only the gradual impact of inflation, but also allowed states to focus corrections resources on more serious offenses and made punishments more proportionate to theft crimes.”
The National Retail Federation (NRF), which has been sending out alarms about jumps in shoplifting, has blamed increased felony theft thresholds in part for reported retail crime surges.
In a 2022 blog entry, the NRF wrote that many state laws in recent years had not only increased felony theft thresholds but lowered the bail required for minor offenses and removed non-violent offenders from the prison system in hopes of reducing the likelihood of “career criminals.”
The NRF said, “In an effort to help locales meet criminal justice reform goals and free resources to go after more violent and serious offenders, those apprehended were often quickly released due to the ‘non-violent’ and unimportant nature of these property crimes. The result is that criminals can recruit people to steal inexpensive items in great quantities with no fear of retribution or prosecution.”