Month: September 2017

Sentence Enhancements: Next Target of Corrections Reform?

Senate Bill 180, which has passed through the legislature and is currently on the governor’s desk, aims to change a sentence enhancement related to dealing drugs. The bill would repeal the three-year enhancement for a prior conviction related to drug sales, except in cases where a minor is used in the crime. The repeal would affect just 2.3% of the people who entered prison between October 2015 and September 2016. In light of the state’s efforts to downsize its prison and jail populations, however, the bill’s passage could create momentum for similar reforms.

California’s best-known sentence enhancement mechanism is the Three Strikes Law, passed in 1994. The law doubles the sentence of any offender convicted of a second serious or violent crime. A third conviction results in a sentence of between 25 years to life. There are roughly 38,000 second and third “strikers” in California prisons, a little more than one-third of the prison population.

Overall, California has more than 100 separate code sections that enhance sentences based on the current offense or the offender’s record. For example, using a firearm while committing a violent and/or sexual felony adds anywhere from 10 to 25 years. A gang-related felony results in 2 to 10 additional years, depending upon the seriousness of the offense.

Figure jail sentence enhancementAs of September 2016, 79.9% of prisoners in institutions operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had some kind of sentence enhancement; 25.5% had three or more. Aside from second and third strikes, the most common enhancement adds one year for each previous prison or jail term.

Research on sentence lengths offers little support for the idea that the threat of longer sentences deters people from committing crimes. Physically removing a person from society does prevent him or her from engaging in criminal activity, which is part of the appeal of enhancements. However, research shows that this “incapacitation effect” varies across different types of offenders and that longer prison stays are wasteful when applied to people who are “low frequency” offenders.

When considering this bill and similar proposals, the state has the difficult task of balancing the costs of keeping people in custody— in terms of tax dollars spent on expensive prison beds as well as collateral costs borne by families and communities—against the potential cost to public safety.

Video: Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests

Forests in the Sierra Nevada benefit all Californians―they provide timber, wildlife habitat, recreational landscapes, two-thirds of the state’s surface water, and other benefits. But their health is in decline from drought, insect infestation, changes in management practices, and overcrowding. These changes have raised the risk of catastrophic wildfire and tree die-off. Improving forest health will require thinning trees, which will make forests more resilient.

These were some of the observations from experts gathered in Sacramento to discuss a new PPIC report on improving forest management.

Van Butsic―an assistant cooperative extension specialist from the University of California, Berkeley, and a coauthor of the  report—gave an overview of the crisis in forest health and solutions to it. A panel discussion followed, moderated by the PPIC Water Policy Center’s Jeffrey Mount. The panelists were David Edelson, Sierra Nevada project director at the Nature Conservancy; Barnie Gyant, deputy regional forester for resources for the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service; and Susie Kocher, natural resources advisor for the Central Sierra Region at the University of California Cooperative Extension.

“We looked at prescribed fire, managed wildfire, and mechanical thinning, and we realized these three treatments were actually effective,” said Butsic. “But they’re hard to use in California because of a complex management environment.”

Some essential takeaways from the event included:

  • About two-thirds of the land in California’s headwaters is federally owned, making the federal government a key player in solving this crisis.
  • Policy and budgets prioritize fire suppression over forest management. More than half of the US Forest Service budget is for fire suppression.
  • Revenue-generating logging on forest management projects can make these projects financially viable.
  • Treatments to thin forests can negatively affect species and habitat—but catastrophic wildfire is even more harmful.
  • Climate change makes solving the crisis in our forests challenging but not impossible.

Jeff Mount wrapped up the event by noting that the forest health crisis presents an “exceptional opportunity” to stakeholders and decision makers. “We’re seeing an awakening and awareness at a level we’ve never experienced,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary moment that is not to be wasted.”

Learn more
Read Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests (PPIC, September 2017)
Read California’s Water: Protecting Headwaters (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s drought resource page

Crime Rates Stable Overall, But Some Counties See Big Changes

In 2011, California embarked on a series of criminal justice reforms, decreasing the state’s reliance on costly incarceration—and raising fears about the impact on public safety. A look at recently released crime numbers from the California Department of Justice show that while auto thefts are up almost 10%, the state has not seen a broad surge in crime since the reforms started. The violent crime rate is up 1.1% (and when adjusted for an important definitional change, is in fact down about 1%), while the property crime rate is down 3.2%. However, these statewide numbers mask substantial differences across counties.

Prompted by a federal court mandate to reduce the population of the state’s overcrowded prisons, California enacted public safety realignment in 2011. This historic reform shifted the management of lower-level felons from state prison and parole systems to county jail and probation systems. Since then—with the state still unable to meet the federal mandate—voters have passed three significant initiatives: Proposition 36 in 2012, Proposition 47 in 2014, and Proposition 57 in 2016. Due to the combined impact of these reforms, the state’s incarceration rate has declined dramatically and is now at a level not seen since the early 1990s.

While reforms were unquestionably needed—the state faced a possible federal order to release more than 30,000 prisoners early—critics have voiced concerns that public safety may be negatively affected and have asked whether less incarceration would reverse California’s long-term decline in crime rates.

Have reforms affected crime in California? A comparison of 2016 crime rates to those of 2010, the year before any of these reforms were implemented, provides a useful starting point.

The 2016 violent crime rate of 444 per 100,000 residents is up somewhat (1.1%) from the 2010 rate of 439 per 100,000 residents. However, the FBI implemented a change in 2014 that expanded the definition of sexual crimes that constitute rape. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, the new definition added about 38% to the number of reported rapes in 2014 in California, increasing the violent crime rate by about 8 more violent crimes per 100,000 residents. If we adjust the 2016 violent crime rate accordingly, from 444 to 436 per 100,000 residents, we find that this more comparable measure indicates a slight drop in violent crime (of about 1%) between 2010 and 2016.

The property crime rate in 2016 of 2,545 per 100,000 residents is down 3.2% from 2010 and is the second lowest rate observed since 1960 (the lowest was 2,459 per 100,000 residents in 2014). While the rate of auto theft is up 9.9%, burglaries have been decreasing noticeably since 2012 and are now down 21.9% from 2010. Larceny theft has changed very little (up less than 1%).

The picture is more complicated at the county level. A look at the 15 largest California counties shows that five saw double-digit drops in their violent crime rates between 2010 and 2016: San Mateo, Contra Costa, San Diego, Sacramento, and Alameda. But Ventura and Fresno Counties experienced increases of more than 10%. And while the property crime rate dropped more than 20% in three counties—Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Fresno—it went up a staggering 35.5% in San Francisco. Alameda County saw an increase of almost 10%.

How can we explain these differences? Before rushing to conclusions, there are several questions that need to be answered first. How have reforms affected factors such as arrests and incarceration? Do these differ across counties and what is their relationship to crime rates? Also, California’s crime trends may be affected by factors unrelated to recent reforms. How do statewide trends compare to what other states are seeing? Finally, have California’s reforms improved outcomes for those released from our jails and prisons? If so, this could help lower crime rates in the coming years. Our goal at PPIC is to address these important questions in our upcoming research.

Storing Water for Dry Days

Where would California be without the ability to store water? We talked to Jay Lund―an adjunct fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center and director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis—about the often contentious and always complex topic of water storage.

Jay LundPPIC: What should every Californian know about storing water?

Jay Lund: Thanks to our Mediterranean climate, California has a very long dry season, which is when we use most of our water, and a fairly short wet season, when we try to gather and store water. To put water storage in perspective, California every year has a worse drought–in the form of a long dry season—than most of the country has ever seen. California has always relied on water storage, and in droughts today we rely on it even more. Almost all the water people use in summer has been stored someplace—either in a reservoir or groundwater. The state’s natural storage system of groundwater and snowpack is now augmented with reservoirs, pipelines, and groundwater pumping. This storage and conveyance system has been critical to California’s prosperity, particularly to its agricultural economy.

You often hear calls for more storage, and of course we do have some limitations in water storage capacity. But no matter how large a reservoir you build, you’ll never be able to reliably get more water out than that stream’s average flow into it. In much of the state the problem is that there’s not enough water available to store or that we can’t get water to the places where it’s needed most. The bottlenecks are often inadequate conveyance rather than storage.

PPIC: What did we learn about water storage from the recent drought and subsequent record-breaking wet winter?

JL: The drought highlighted the importance of groundwater storage. Surface storage in reservoirs is very important in the first couple years of a drought, but with longer droughts we rely more and more on groundwater storage. Groundwater will always be our primary storage for long droughts. California has 400–500 million acre-feet in groundwater storage, compared to about 42 million acre-feet in total surface reservoir capacity. Water quality is a bigger challenge with groundwater than with surface water, since pollutants can be washed into aquifers and accumulate there.

California’s geography is fortunate—we have huge aquifers under the Central Valley. Farmers made up for about 70% of reduced water supply during the drought by pumping groundwater. The longer the drought, the more important groundwater becomes. If we don’t manage to recharge enough water during wet years, there won’t be enough in drought years.

The wet year brought us the Oroville Dam spillway crisis. All of the dam’s outlet structures were compromised or broken for much of the winter. It was a good reminder that we have to maintain these structures and systems, and find funding for maintenance and independent inspections. Good inspectors will always find some concerns and problems, but few problems rise to the level of crisis. With California’s extensive water infrastructure system, if you’re not finding any problems you’re not looking hard enough.

PPIC: What will it take to made good use of groundwater recharge and storage?

JL: You need three things to recharge groundwater: porous land above an aquifer, enough water available above that land, and enough empty space under that land to store it. While local conditions are important, the big limitation for the areas of California experiencing groundwater problems is lack of surface water available for recharge. During this wet winter, people were trying to recharge as much as possible and being very creative about it. But this was a record wet year. We often lack enough water to get good recharge.

To improve recharge locally, we need a better accounting system to improve incentives. We also need more legal protections for local agencies that want to do recharge, and faster authorizations to recharge in wetter years.

Learn moreRead Dams in California (PPIC fact sheet, September 2017).
Read California’s Water: Storing Water (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016).
Read “Expanding Water Storage Capacity in California” (California Water Blog, February 22, 2012).
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center.

California Millennials and Climate Change

In our most recent PPIC Statewide Survey, we found a record-high share of adults (58%) saying that global warming is a very serious threat to the state’s economy and quality of life. This view is strongly related to Californians’ broad support for state climate change policies, and it is most commonly held among millennials—adults age 35 and younger. Millennials also stand out in their support for state actions to address climate change:

  • Seventy-five percent of millennials favor the state making its own policies, separate from the federal government, to address global warming.
  • Eighty percent support the new greenhouse gas emission reduction goal (SB 32) that updates California’s landmark climate change legislation, and 84% support a new target of 100% renewable electricity by 2045.
  • Seventy percent favor the state’s cap and trade system after hearing a brief description of it. In contrast, fewer than half of baby boomers (ages 53 to 71) favor the cap and trade system, in which the state enforces “caps” on greenhouse gas emissions by issuing permits that can be traded among companies.

Figure millennials and climate changeCalifornia millennials are about as likely as older adults to expect higher gas prices as a result of state climate change policies (52% millennials, 53% generation X, 55% baby boomers). But among those who expect higher gas prices, millennials are more likely than older adults to support the policies named above. Indeed, 73% of millennials expecting higher gas prices support SB 32, compared to 63% of gen Xers and 59% of baby boomers.

Also of note, majorities of younger adults support these policies, regardless of whether they call themselves liberals, moderates, or conservatives. For example, 61% of conservative millennials support cap and trade, compared to 25% of conservative baby boomers. Similarly, at least 7 in 10 millennials support SB 32, whether they are white or Latino, whether they have a college degree or not, and regardless of their income group.

Such broad support for the state’s climate change policies among younger Californians suggests that, if these opinions hold, Californians’ desire for state action on climate change is not likely to diminish in the years ahead.

Find out more about the PPIC Statewide Survey.

Video: Reforms Challenge County Probation Departments

Changes in criminal justice policy have significantly altered the role of probation in the state and, as documented in a new PPIC report, have put considerable demands on counties.

The report, California Probation in the Era of Reform, is based on data from 12 counties and describes the changing characteristics of individuals under probation supervision. Viet Nguyen, report coauthor and PPIC research associate, presented the findings at a briefing in Sacramento. Among them:

  • Reforms shifted probation caseloads toward more serious offenders. Public safety realignment—implemented in 2011 and designed to address prison overcrowding—shifted the management of lower-level felons from the state prison and parole systems to county jails and probation departments. After realignment, the number of new probation cases increased steadily because of counties’ new responsibilities in managing two types of offenders: those released from state prison on post-release community supervision and those given “split sentences,” who serve part of their sentence in county jail and then are placed under mandatory supervision. In 2014, Proposition 47—which required that certain drug and property offenses be charged as misdemeanors—resulted in a dramatic decline in new felony and misdemeanor probation cases. But it also further concentrated the probation caseload on individuals who have committed more serious offenses.
  • Jail bookings are common among the probation population, especially for realigned offenders. Nearly half of people placed under probation supervision were booked into county jail within their first year. Realigned offenders had the highest booking rates, were more likely to enter jail multiple times in their first year, and stayed in jail longer than traditional felony and misdemeanor probation cases.
  • African Americans are overrepresented among people under probation supervision. African Americans make up 7.9% of the general population but 22.9% of those entering probation supervision. Overall, the shares of Latinos and whites under probation supervision were similar to their shares in the population, while Asian Americans made up a much smaller proportion of new probation cases.

Learn moreRead the report California Probation in the Era of Reform

Leon Panetta Joins PPIC Board

I am pleased to welcome Leon Panetta, a distinguished leader with decades of experience at the highest levels of government, to the PPIC Board of Directors. His leadership talent and exceptional knowledge of public policy will be an invaluable asset to PPIC as we work to shape a better future for California.

Panetta, who is chairman of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, has had a 50-year career in public service at the national and state levels of government. He most recently served as US secretary of defense, from 2011–13. Before that, he was director of the CIA, where he successfully led the operation that brought Osama bin Laden to justice.

A Monterey native and graduate of the Santa Clara University School of Law, Panetta began his public service career in 1964 as a first lieutenant in the US Army and received the Army Commendation Medal. He then served as a legislative assistant to US Senator Tom Kuchel. In 1969, he was appointed director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, responsible for enforcing equal education laws. Elected to Congress in 1976, he represented the California central coast for sixteen years. In 1993, he was sworn in as director of the US Office of Management and Budget, where he was instrumental in developing the policies that led to achieving a balanced federal budget. A year later, President Clinton appointed him White House chief of staff.

After leaving the Clinton administration in 1997, he and Sylvia Panetta established the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center to inspire men and women to lives of public service. He chronicles his life in public service in his best-selling memoir Worthy Fights.

As a new board member, Panetta has been elected to a three-year term and is eligible for a maximum of three three-year terms. The PPIC board is chaired by author and farmer Mas Masumoto. It is made up of myself; Ruben Barrales, president and CEO of GROW Elect; María Blanco, executive director of the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center; Louise Henry Bryson, chair emerita of the Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust; A. Marisa Chun, partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP; Chet Hewett, president and CEO of the Sierra Health Foundation; Phil Isenberg, former chair of the Delta Stewardship Council; Donna Lucas, chief executive officer of Lucas Public Affairs; Steven A. Merksamer, senior partner of Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Gross & Leoni, LLP; Gerald L. Parsky, chairman of the Aurora Capital Group; Kim Polese, chairman of ClearStreet, Inc.; and Gaddi H. Vasquez, senior vice president of government affairs for Edison International and Southern California Edison.

PPIC Polling and the Immigration Debate

This post is excerpted from a presentation to the PPIC Board of Directors and guests on September 12, 2017, in Los Angeles.

One of the most important issues for Californians in the first year of the Trump administration is changing federal immigration policy. Immigrants are a significant presence in California, and even more so in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles, the state’s most populous county, is home to more than 10 million people, including more immigrants than any other California county. Twenty-seven percent of California’s population is foreign born—about twice the US percentage—while 35% of Los Angeles County population is foreign born. Moreover, about 2.6 million undocumented immigrants—about a quarter of the total number in the US—live in California. More than 800,000 of these undocumented immigrants live in Los Angeles. Major shifts in federal immigration policy that are under way thus have profound impacts on California and Los Angeles.

Since January, PPIC has been monitoring state and local responses to changing federal immigration policy through our public opinion polling. We have asked 11 questions about federal immigration policy in four monthly surveys, each involving 1,700 California adults, including more than 400 adults from Los Angeles County, interviewed by landline and cellphone in English or Spanish. The margin of error is +/-3% for California and +/-6% for Los Angeles. While the country is politically divided on immigration issues, we have found some bipartisan agreement in California. Here’s a sampling of our findings this year:

  • Undocumented immigrants living in the US: In our January PPIC Statewide Survey, 85% of Californians and 89% of Los Angeles residents agreed that undocumented immigrants who are living in the US should be allowed to stay legally. These results are consistent with earlier PPIC surveys. Moreover, solid majorities were in favor of state and local governments making their own policies and taking actions, separate from the federal government, to protect the legal rights of undocumented immigrants in California (65% California, 73% Los Angeles).
  • Border wall, travel ban on residents of six Muslim-majority nations: In our March PPIC survey, when asked about building a wall along the entire Mexico border, more than 7 in 10 were opposed (72% Californians, 76% Los Angeles). In the same survey, about 6 in 10 (58% California, 63% Los Angeles) opposed the president’s revised travel ban involving six Muslim countries.
  • Immigration enforcement and schools: In our April survey, 46% of Californians and 55% of Los Angeles residents said they are very concerned that increased federal immigration enforcement efforts will impact undocumented students and their families in their local public school districts. More than 6 in 10 (65% Californians, 73% Los Angeles) favored having their local public school district designated as a sanctuary safe zone in order to protect its undocumented students and their families from federal immigration enforcement efforts.
  • Worries about deportation, impact of enforcement on business and jobs: In our May PPIC survey, 30% of Californians and 34% of Los Angeles residents said they worry a lot that someone they know could be deported as a result of increased federal immigration enforcement. About half said that increased federal immigration enforcement will have a negative impact on businesses, jobs, and the economy in their part of California (49% California, 53% Los Angeles).

As the federal policy landscape shifted this year, PPIC Statewide Surveys continued to find majority support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are living in the US: in our March survey, 68% of Californians and 71% of Los Angeles residents remained supportive. In contrast to the political divide in the rest of the nation, strong majorities across parties in California continue to agree that undocumented immigrants who are living in the US should be allowed to stay legally.

California’s path forward on immigration is a work in progress, as is the case in other areas that are undergoing federal and state policy changes. Moreover, there are uncertainties about federal actions such as the fate of the DACA program—which protects young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation—the imposition of fiscal sanctions on sanctuary states and cities, the ban on travel from Muslim countries, and the construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. As we have seen, California’s immigration policymaking is occurring in the context of strong public opposition to federal shifts, high levels of public concern about how these shifts are affecting undocumented immigrants and our regional economies, and strong support for actions by state and local governments to protect the legal rights of undocumented immigrants. At PPIC, we hope to foster conversations about immigration that lead to a better future for all Californians.

Learn more
Find out more about the PPIC Statewide Survey.

Fellow to Explore Central Valley Groundwater Problems

Josué Medellín-Azuara headshotI am pleased to announce the appointment of Josué Medellín-Azuara, a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s research network, as the 2017 Steyer-Taylor Fellow. This is the second year of a three-year fellowship―supported with funding from the TomKat Foundation, established by Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor―to explore solutions to some of California’s toughest groundwater policy challenges.

Medellín-Azuara is associate professor at the UC Merced School of Engineering. He focuses on water resources economics with expertise in water management for agricultural, environmental and urban uses, and farm adaptation to drought and climate change, among other topics.

This fellowship not only advances the water center’s work, it also adds to the state’s body of knowledge on how to address many of the challenges of sustainable groundwater management.

Medellín-Azuara will explore how California agriculture can adapt to future challenges of managing groundwater—especially in the stressed groundwater basins of the San Joaquin Valley, which is the state’s most important agricultural region and largest water user.

“We’ll be looking at future scenarios involving a changing climate, urbanization, technological advancement, and water scarcity, which will shape California’s agricultural mosaic,” said Medellín-Azuara.

The state’s groundwater law requires the valley’s water users to develop sustainable groundwater management plans by 2020.  Medellín-Azuara is part of a team of PPIC Water Policy Center researchers working on a comprehensive analysis of possible sustainable water management solutions for the region.

Learn more
Read the report Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley (March 2017)
Read “Groundwater in California” (PPIC fact sheet, May 2017)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

California’s Dream Act

As the federal government moves to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, California is continuing to support the higher education aspirations of undocumented students. California’s Dream Act is a set of laws intended to lower the cost of higher education for certain undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children and raised in California. Thousands of California students have benefited from the program so far.

College can be especially expensive for undocumented students. For tuition purposes they are not technically California residents and therefore are not eligible for in-state tuition. Public colleges and universities charge extra tuition for nonresidents: currently an additional $28,000 per year at UC and $6,000 per year at CSU. In addition, undocumented students are not eligible for federal financial aid, such as Pell Grants or federal loans, leaving college out of reach for many who are low-income.

California passed AB 540 in 2001, which waives the nonresident portion of tuition for undocumented childhood arrivals as long as they meet certain criteria, including spending three or more years in California K‒12 schools, graduating from a California high school, and promising  to apply for legalizing their immigration status as soon as they are eligible to do so.  In addition, the state passed AB 130 and AB 131 in 2011, which allows state and institutional financial aid to be given to students eligible under AB 540.

Undocumented students cannot file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to apply for federal and state financial aid for college. This means that many do not have access to Cal Grants, one of the state’s main forms of financial aid. Instead, those who are eligible can apply for Cal Grants using the California Dream Act application.

Of all Cal Grant offers in 2014‒15, about 3% have been made to California Dream Act applicants. Of those eligible for the awards, both FAFSA filers and Dream Act filers have similar GPAs. However, those obtaining a Cal Grant through the state Dream Act application were more likely to come from families with parents without college degrees and with lower family incomes.

A student’s DACA status has no bearing on the California’s Dream Act, so AB 540 students will continue to pay in-state tuition rates and can apply for and receive state and institutional aid to help lower the cost of college, even if the federal DACA program ends. However, without a work permit these undocumented students still cannot work legally in the US, even if they obtain a degree from a California college or university. The approximately quarter of a million Californians covered by DACA will still be subject to deportation without further federal legislative or executive action. That uncertainty could keep otherwise qualified students from earning a college degree.

Learn more

Read “DACA and California’s Future” on the PPIC Blog.

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center.