Kentucky would double the minimum dollar amount required to charge someone with the crime of felony theft, under a criminal-justice reform measure that cleared the state House on Wednesday.
The legislation would increase the minimum threshold for felony theft to $1,000 from the current $500. Property thefts under $1,000 would be considered a misdemeanor, which carries a lesser penalty.
The bill won House passage by a comfortable margin and heads to the Senate next. Its lead sponsor, Republican Rep. C. Ed Massey, said it won’t lessen a commitment to accountability. He deflected criticism that it could unintentionally lead to more thefts in the push for criminal-justice reform.
“We are simply trying to give people an opportunity that if they made a poor judgment, that it won’t necessarily wreck their lives with a felony status,” he said.
In most theft cases, offenders are expected to pay restitution, Massey said. They also can serve up to a year in jail for some misdemeanor convictions.
Under the bill, offenders would still be subject to a felony for committing three theft offenses of property valued between $500 and $1,000 within a five-year period. The felony threshold for several types of fraud — now as low as $100 — also would increase to $1,000 under the measure.
It’s one of several proposals offered in recent years to revise the state’s criminal justice laws.
Supporters tout the higher felony theft threshold as a way to reduce prison populations and thus corrections costs for the state. They say the threshold hasn’t kept pace with inflation.
Speaking against the bill, Republican Rep. John Blanton expressed concern that the higher threshold could result in more people becoming victims of thefts.
“In the name of criminal-justice reform, which is a nice catch phrase that’s caught wind across this country, do we want to allow more of our constituents to be victims?” he asked Wednesday.
Kentucky has one of the nation’s lowest felony theft thresholds, one that hasn’t been indexed for inflation in more than a decade, according to criminal-justice reform advocates.
Blanton said he recognizes that the “value of things change over time,” but he warned that thieves would take note of the higher threshold and steal accordingly.
“Believe it or not, not everyone who commits some of these thefts are dumb,” Blanton said. “They’ll calculate how much something is worth and they’ll try to stay below that felony threshold.”
The Associated Press
