Earlier this month, Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp and Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks delivered remarks for a criminal justice reform town hall at the Elks Lodge #597 in Reno.

The town hall was hosted by Keystone Corporation, a statewide political action committee that recruits and supports pro-business candidates.

Smittcamp and Hicks warned that Nevada is becoming more like California when it comes to crime justice reform.

"I could stand here literally until next week talking about the failures of California and what has happened to our beautiful state," said Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp.

The main concern for the district's attorneys is Assembly Bill 236, a sweeping criminal justice reform bill passed by the Democratic legislative majority in 2019. AB236 aims to reduce Nevada's high prison population through changes to the penal code related to sentencing, bail, probation, drug offenses, and felony categories and convictions. The district attorneys say Nevada's new laws resemble reform policies in California that they believe are failing society.

"What I call this shift in the last three and a half years is the erosion of criminal consequences in Nevada," said Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks.

Hicks presented statistics showing a rise in crime in Washoe County. He cited the passage of Nevada's 2019 criminal justice reform bill as the reason for the spike in crime in Nevada's second-largest county.

"Property crime is up seven percent, larceny is up 14 percent, vehicle theft 15%. Disturbingly, violent crime is up 8%," explained Hicks.

However, a progressive defense attorney and civil attorney, Erica Roth, says that Nevada is taking a different approach than California that will ultimately strengthen communities.

"Blanket statements that crime is out of control, that these smash and grabs are happening and businesses across the country are shutting down. Show me the data, because that data is not seeming to exist, and it's used as a red herring for Republicans at this point in time to try to unwind criminal justice reforms that we know have been working," said Reno attorney Erica Roth.

A key provision of AB236 is that it raised the threshold for a theft felony from 650 dollars worth of the stolen goods to $1,200.

"Our theft threshold for felonies is about the median for the country. So, states like Texas, I believe Minnesota. Their theft threshold is 2,500, so it is true that ours is higher than California, but it's apples and oranges. The state of Nevada is different, and we've approached criminal justice reform in a different way," said Roth.

In contrast to Washoe County DA Chris Hicks' 2-year statistics, Roth is looking at longer trends mapped out by Nevada Crime Statistics.

'You can look at five-year markers, and what's so important about that is you can look at 2019 when criminal justice reforms passed, and we underwent a global pandemic (so it went up a little bit), but when you take a bigger step back you look at five years before that, ten years before that, we're seeing these trends come down," explained Roth.

Roth also points to a new statistic showing recidivism, or criminals reoffending in the state, is at an all-time low. She tells us that it was just reported on Friday at the sentencing commission by the Nevada Department of Corrections.

Roth is running for Assembly District 24 in Reno. We have reached out to Roth's Democratic primary challenger, Kurt Thigpin, for a statement that we will add to this article.