How inflation makes your state’s criminal justice system harsher today than it was yesterday

The case for increasing the monetary level for felony theft.

by Tiana Herring, June 10, 2020

Each state sets a statutory definition of which thefts are felonies (punishable by longer sentences in prison) and which are misdemeanors (punishable by shorter sentences in jail). But in many states, the dollar amount separating felony theft from misdemeanor theft has not been increased in years, even though inflation makes the older laws more punitive each year.

These limits vary from New Jersey (a $200 theft is a fourth-degree felony) to Texas and Wisconsin where a theft must be worth $2,500 before you can get a state prison sentence. New Jersey’s limit is so low because it is one of the oldest in the country — it remains unchanged from when it was originally enacted in 1978.¹ Only one state — Alaska — automatically adjusts the felony theft threshold with inflation.² The range between the states is tremendous:

Updating felony theft statutes is one simple way to reduce the number of people serving time in prison for low-level offenses. Making more minor thefts into misdemeanors will also spare more people from the often lifelong collateral consequences of felony convictions that can limit their access to public housing, welfare benefits, and even voting.

Decreasing the punishment for minor thefts is unlikely to encourage more thefts. As Pew Charitable Trusts found in their invaluable 2018 report, States Can Safely Raise Their Felony Theft Thresholds, Research Shows, South Carolina’s property crime rates actually continued to fall years after the threshold increased. This isn’t unique to South Carolina, either. Pew’s article also included a brief comparison of crime rates in all 50 states, reporting that between 2000 and 2012, the 30 states that increased their thresholds had property crime rates similar to the 20 states that had not yet updated their laws.

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