Tag: public safety

A Closer Look at Early Jail Releases

Almost three years after California’s public safety realignment took effect, county sheriffs have few options for handling jail populations that are approaching historical highs reached in 2007. To help address these capacity challenges and responsibilities, the legislature recently passed SB 863, which dedicated $500 million to county jail construction. This is in addition to the $1.7 billion provided through two previous measures: AB 900 in 2007 and SB 1022 in 2012. Overall, these three construction programs will add more than 13,000 jail beds across the state. However, given projected growth in the overall population—and if there are no new policies and practices that reduce incarceration—this investment in county jails will probably be insufficient to meet the state’s long term needs.

After realignment began in October 2011, the number of inmates in state prisons decreased quickly and substantially, as intended. But the prison population is still too large to meet the federal mandate and has recently started to increase somewhat. In that same period, the county jail population has increased by about 11,000 inmates. Because relying solely on expanding jail and prison capacity to handle future pressures would be very costly and would have a limited crime preventive effect, serious consideration should be given to sentencing reform. Conversations about sentencing changes are ongoing in Sacramento and an initiative reducing the penalty for certain property and drug offenses (Proposition 47) is on the November ballot.

As county sheriffs wait for long-term and sustainable solutions to the incarceration problem, they must handle the growing and fluctuating demand for jail beds. This is particularly true in the 19 counties facing court-ordered jail population caps. Releasing inmates early because of space constraints is nothing new for sheriffs. In fact, data from the Board of State and Community Corrections Jail Profile Survey show that the current level of about 13,000 of these releases statewide per month is well short of the highs of 16,000–17,000 reached in 2007.

Interestingly, these data also show that although the jail population continues to creep up, the number of monthly early releases increased but recently appears to have plateaued. After reaching a post-realignment high of 14,553 in August 2012, early releases declined to a monthly average of roughly 12,900. In other words, the data does not indicate a recent surge in the number of releases and they have certainly not approached the 17,000 level recently reported in the media.

However, these releases do raise public safety concerns. The leveling off of early releases despite the growing demand for jail beds suggests that sheriffs share these concerns. The extent to which early releases jeopardize public safety depends not only on the number of inmates released but on which ones are now spending time on the streets instead of in jail. There is no widely available information about how, and more importantly whether, sheriffs effectively identify and release the lowest risk inmates. Taking steps to assess these decisions would help ensure that future releases protect public safety.

Expanding Health Insurance—to Jail Inmates

The federal Affordable Care Act provides an opportunity for local governments to enroll jail inmates in health insurance programs that could lower costs and improve health conditions. Moreover, California has recently passed legislation that facilitates the use of jails as sites of health care enrollment.

PPIC researchers Mia Bird and Shannon McConville address this topic in a recent report titled Health Care for California’s Jail Population. The report, presented at a public event this week in Sacramento, finds that nearly 2.3 million health care visits were recorded in county jails statewide in 2012. Inmates have disproportionately high health needs and typically have had little access to health care prior to incarceration. Connecting inmates to health coverage before they are released from custody may help to reduce county costs, lower recidivism, and improve public health.

Evaluating Corrections Reforms

Three years into California’s dramatic experiment in decentralizing the adult criminal justice system, we still have very limited knowledge of which correctional programs and services are most effective at reducing recidivism and which counties are achieving success under realignment. Even more troubling, this is not the first time the state has made a major corrections policy change without putting in place the tools to evaluate it. Nearly 20 years ago, California initiated a similar experiment with the juvenile justice system, and we still lack the necessary data to evaluate its success. This time, the stakes are even higher.

To understand whether and how well corrections reforms work, we need individual-level data, records that allow us to follow people as they move through the corrections system. Unfortunately, neither reform effort mandated this type of data collection. Neither charged a single state entity with devising a means of collecting, standardizing, and integrating data across the myriad components of the criminal justice system—police, courts, jails, prisons, and parole and probation departments. In fact, in both cases realignment magnified data integration problems. It transferred responsibility for certain offenders from the state to the counties, further decentralizing authority over offender management and data collection.

Troubled state correctional facilities were an impetus for both juvenile and adult reform. In each case populations in youth and adult state facilities declined—as intended—after lower-level offenders were transferred from state to county authority. In the case of juvenile justice, the youth population in state facilities dropped by 69 percent between 2007 and 2013; in the adult system, the state prison population dropped by 17 percent between 2011 and 2013.

But the impact at the county level differed for juveniles and adults. Adult county jail populations have increased by 14 percent since reform of the adult system began. By contrast, juvenile populations—held in county juvenile halls, camps, and ranches— have dropped by 37 percent. This decline occurred even though the reform gave counties the incentive—and later the obligation—to retain lower-level offenders.

The juvenile justice reforms coincided with a steady drop in juvenile felony arrest rates. This decline undoubtedly played a role in the dwindling number of youths in county confinement. But what remains unknown is the role of county corrections programs in rehabilitating juveniles and, in turn, driving arrest rates down. Good data would help us to make those assessments.

Any sense of urgency to create an integrated data system may have been diminished by the decline in juvenile crime rates that followed the 2007 reform. These rates are still near historic lows. Similarly, adult crime rates are also near historic lows. Realignment of that system has resulted in only a modest rise in crime so far. If these historically low crime rates are the new normal, California may choose the same path it followed after juvenile justice realignment.

However, before choosing this path we should consider the stakes. About 200,000 adults, most of whom will return to their communities at some point, are incarcerated in California’s jails and prisons. This is 26 times larger than the number of youth confined in all state juvenile facilities, county juvenile halls, ranches, and camps. Californians should ask themselves if they want to forego a greater understanding of what will be most effective in helping to rehabilitate these offenders—now and in the future.

California’s Jail Construction Needs

The governor’s proposal to spend $500 million for local jail construction raised many questions at a hearing Thursday of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on public safety. In testimony to the committee, PPIC research associate Brandon Martin answered many of the questions from a report released this week, Key Factors in California’s Jail Construction Needs. The report describes the increase in jail crowding since responsibility for tens of thousands of offenders was shifted to counties. The report also looks at the age and condition of jails and the challenge of housing a changing inmate population. Here are his prepared remarks.

Good afternoon. I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to comment. My name is Brandon Martin and I am a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California. For those who are not familiar with PPIC, we are a nonpartisan, independent research institute focused on major policy issues in California. PPIC does not take positions on legislation.

PPIC released a report yesterday—entitled Key Factors in California’s Jail Construction Needs—that focuses on three factors: recent changes in jail population, aging jail facilities, and long-term jail capacity needs.

  • Our study describes the impact of realignment on jail populations. As of June 2013, the average daily population in jails statewide was just under 82,000, or 105 percent of the maximum number of inmates that the state’s county jails were designed to hold, which is around 77,000. This represents an increase of nearly 10,000 inmates since September 2011. Thirty-six counties had an average daily jail population that exceeded 90 percent of rated capacity, twenty-one of those counties operated over 100 percent of rated capacity.
  • Our study also looks at the age of local jail facilities and finds that nearly half—or 56 of California’s 123 county jails—were constructed in the 1970s or earlier. County officials point out that older facilities can be quite limited in their ability to provide medical and mental health care, reentry programming, or recreational services, particularly for longer-term inmates.
    • Our calculations indicate that it could cost more than $3 billion (not including bond financing costs) to replace the 18 oldest facilities, which were built in the 1950s or earlier.
  • Looking to the future, our study outlines the impact of recent investments on jail capacity. As a result of AB 900 and SB 1022, we estimate the number of counties operating above rated capacity is projected to decline from 21 to 15 by 2020.
  • But we also anticipate that statewide population growth will bring crowding conditions to current levels and beyond between now and 2040, especially in fast-growing inland counties such as Fresno, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Joaquin.
  • We estimate that it could cost about $1.2 billion (not including bond financing costs) between now and 2040 to add enough capacity—4,300 beds—to allow jails statewide to operate at the challenging level of 100 percent of rated capacity.

Given the magnitude of California’s current and future jail challenges, our analysis suggests the need for a thoughtful combination of additional jail construction—with a focus on old and ineffective facilities—and policies and practices that reduce incarceration.

Thank you for your time. I am happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

Testimony: A Data-Driven Approach to Corrections

The Senate Public Safety Committee considered a bill Tuesday by Senator Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) that would require counties to collect specific data elements relating to public safety realignment, a policy that shifted responsibility for lower-level felony offenders from the state to counties. The senator said the bill was inspired in part by a data project underway at PPIC. PPIC research fellow Mia Bird testified about the project. Here are her prepared remarks.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Mia Bird, and I am a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. For those who are not familiar with PPIC, we are a non-partisan independent research institute focused on major policy issues in California. PPIC does not take positions on bills and we do not have a position on SB 1097. However, we do have core staff focused on corrections in California and we hope to inform the decisions ahead in this area. At PPIC we are interested in the effects of realignment on recidivism and public safety outcomes, as well as on county jail and corrections systems. Today I plan to discuss our ongoing effort to collect data that would permit the state, counties, and researchers to identify effective county corrections practices.

Public safety realignment (AB 109) fundamentally changed the corrections system in California, shifting responsibility for tens of thousands of lower-level felons from the state to the counties. A central principle of AB 109 is that counties should have a strong hand in designing their own approaches to managing offenders now under their supervision. In authorizing counties to implement their own realignment plans, California has effectively created 58 county policy laboratories and with them, the opportunity to use variation in county approaches to identify best practices that can be shared throughout the state and nationwide. However, if the state is to take advantage of this opportunity, counties will need to collect the minimum data required to evaluate their efforts.

AB 109 states that “fiscal policy and correctional practices should align to promote a justice reinvestment strategy that fits each county.” It defines “justice reinvestment” as a “data-driven approach to reduce corrections spending and reinvest savings” using “evidence-based strategies designed to increase public safety.” It is laudable that the state endorsed the use of a data-driven approach and evidence-based strategies, but many counties will need additional support to meet this goal. While realignment legislation clearly advocated for the use of evidence-based practices, it did not come with resources earmarked for data collection or guidance on the kind of data that would make identifying best practices possible.

PPIC is coordinating with eleven counties and the Board of State and Community Corrections to begin to address this need. Taken together, the eleven counties cover a majority of the state’s realignment population and represent the demographic and geographic diversity of the state. We are working with participating counties to develop the capacity to collect individual-level data on offender characteristics and criminal histories, as well as the corrections interventions these offenders experience at the county level. These interventions may include a wide range of strategies, such as reentry services, graduated sanctioning, and alternatives to incarceration.

Once collected, these county-level data will be merged with state level recidivism data. This data system will allow the state, counties, and researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of the corrections interventions used under realignment. Identifying effective strategies is critical to targeting limited resources to their best use, with the aim of achieving the greatest possible recidivism reduction for the public safety dollar.

PPIC is currently providing technical assistance to set up this data system, and we will work with BSCC to establish procedures for timely access when complete. Resulting datasets will be held and maintained by the BSCC and made available to the state, counties, and qualified researchers for evaluative work and research.

Although the project is in its early stages, we have gained important insights from our work to date. On April 17, PPIC released a report entitled Corrections Realignment and Data Collection in California that offers a vision of what it would mean to fully embrace the data-driven approach to corrections articulated in AB 109. We describe data collection goals that would allow for the identification of evidence-based practices, including the need to collect individual-level data elements, to agree on definitions for those key data elements, and to share limited data across corrections departments and service provider organizations.

In the report, we also examine the barriers counties currently face to achieving these data collection goals. We find a key challenge shared across many counties is the need for upgraded and integrated data systems that can facilitate offender management within agencies, share relevant data across agencies, and collect the data necessary for evaluation. As counties develop plans to improve their data systems, the state has the opportunity to play a role in guiding these efforts. For example, the state might provide guidance on the key system features, coordinate the collection of a minimum set of common elements, and ensure the use of common definitions across counties.

Recently, the state has made investments in new jail construction to increase the physical capacity for community corrections, and we suggest an analogous investment to upgrade the technological capacity for community corrections. How much would such efforts cost? Right now, we do not know the full scope of the funds that would be needed, but our sense from the eleven counties we have worked with is that needs will vary across the state. Because the legislature has charged the Board of State and Community Corrections with providing leadership, coordination, and technical assistance to promote effective and evidence-based corrections practices, the responsibility for overseeing the recommended improvements may fit within the board’s current scope of work.

More than two years into realignment, some data collection efforts have been established and others are emerging, but the work of creating integrated data systems that can be used to demonstrate the most effective corrections strategies remains largely undone. We see this work as the crucial next step in making progress toward reducing recidivism and improving public safety in California.

Testimony: Crime Trends in California

As legislators prepare to consider the state budget, the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee took a broad look at public safety realignment at a hearing this week. The committee invited PPIC research fellow Magnus Lofstrom to testify about the impact of this major change in corrections policy on crime in California.

My name is Magnus Lofstrom. I am a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. As many of you know, PPIC is a nonpartisan, independent research institute focused on major policy issues in the state. I have been asked to provide an overview of recent crime trends in California to help set the context for your decisions.

The source of crime data most commonly used by researchers is the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, which covers crimes reported or identified by law enforcement agencies. The data fall into two broad categories: violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, larceny theft, and motor vehicle theft). The published FBI crime statistics for California are compiled by the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, which also makes more-detailed monthly data available to the public.

The vast majority of crimes reported in California are property crimes—about 87 percent in 2012. Among these, 61 percent are larceny thefts, 23 percent are burglaries, and 16 percent are motor vehicle thefts. Aggravated assaults and robberies account for 94 percent of violent crime (59% and 35% respectively). Close to 5 percent of reported violent crimes are rapes and slightly more than 1 percent are homicides.

Crime rates in California have been coming down for some time and have reached historic lows (Figure 1). The decline in violent crime dates back to the early 1990s, while the property crime rate has seen a year-to-year decrease in most years since 1980. Although there is no consensus among researchers on the causes of the long-term decline, factors that typically drive trends include changes in sentencing laws and incarceration, demographics (for example, age and race/ethnicity), economic conditions, the dynamics of illegal drug markets, law enforcement officer levels, and policing strategies. The influence of these factors on crime trends varies with the type of crime.

Importantly, the most recent data indicate that the long-term trends might be reversing. This is especially noticeable for property crimes.

After reaching a 45-year low in 2011 of 412 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, in 2012 California’s violent crime rate went up slightly to 422. Nonetheless, the 2012 violent crime rate is at a historically low level—about one-third of its 1992 peak. In 2012, California’s violent crime rate was higher than the national rate of 387 per 100,000 residents and ranked 16th among all states.

The number of property crimes in California increased by 7.6 percent between 2011 and 2012, driving the property crime rate up from 2,586 to 2,757 per 100,000 residents. As with violent crime, property crime is substantially below its peak of 6,939 in 1980. California’s property crime rate continues to be below the national rate (2,859 per 100,000 residents in 2012) and ranked 24th among all states in 2012.

Crime rates vary substantially across the state (Table 1). The highest violent crime rates in 2012 were in San Joaquin and Alameda Counties (889 and 765 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, respectively). The lowest were in the relatively small counties of Placer and Trinity (188 and 155, respectively). We also see dramatic differences across counties in property crime. For example, San Francisco’s property crime rate of 4,848 in 2012 was more than three times higher than the property crime rates in Modoc, Lassen, and Trinity Counties (1,630, 1,578, and 1,383, respectively).

Recent changes in the number of crimes also vary dramatically across the state (Table 2). For example, violent crime went up by 11.6 percent between 2011 and 2012 in Contra Costa, but it decreased by 3.4 percent in Los Angeles. Property crime increased by 23.2 percent in Santa Clara, 18 percent in Alameda and 15.6 percent in Kern –all more than double the 7.6 percent statewide increase—while it increased by only 0.2 percent in Fresno.

Because the recent reversal of statewide crime trends coincided with the implementation of public safety realignment in 2011, questions have been raised about the role of the reform. Motivating these questions is the increase of so-called “offender street time.” Our research shows that about 18,000 offenders who in past years would have been in either prison or jail are not incarcerated now as a result of realignment. We also find that these changes did not affect counties equally. Counties that relied more heavily on the state prison system before realignment saw bigger increases in offender street time. This was especially true in counties that faced serious jail capacity constraints, including the 18 counties with court-ordered jail population caps.

In our research, we assess the extent to which realignment contributed to the recent increases in crime. Our primary approach is to compare changes caused by realignment in county incarceration rates to changes in crime rates (which vary both across counties and over time). That is, we examine the potential effect of changes in street time on crime. To increase our confidence in the results and put them in the context of national changes, we also compare California’s crime trends to trends in other states. Let me begin my discussion with the latter analysis.

In our comprehensive analysis, we find no convincing evidence that realignment has contributed to increases in violent crime, so far. Instead, the recent modest increase in violent crime appears to be part of a broader trend, also seen in other states (Figure 2).

In contrast, our research provides strong evidence that realignment has caused an increase in property crime. In contrast to California’s 7.6 percent increase, property crime nationwide decreased slightly—by 0.9 percent—between 2011 and 2012. Moreover, California’s property crime trend matches up very well with trends in comparable states before realignment, but it starts to diverge in 2011 (Figure 3).

Our analysis of county crime and incarceration data supports what we found in the analysis of state crime trends. The changes in incarceration rates caused by realignment have not led to an increase in violent crime so far, but there has been an increase in property crime, particularly auto thefts. We estimate an additional 1.2 motor vehicle thefts per year for each offender not incarcerated as a result of realignment (Figure 4).

Our estimates translate to an increase in the auto theft rate of about 65 more thefts per year per 100,000 residents. To put it slightly differently, realignment caused an increase of about 24,000 auto thefts per year. It is worth noting that even with this increase, auto theft rates remain historically low. They are now at the levels we observed as recently as 2009.

These estimates can be used to compare the costs of incarceration to its effect in preventing crime. This cost-benefit exercise shows that the state has not gotten a good return on its investment: an additional dollar spent on incarceration yields only about 23 cents in terms of the crimes averted.

The limited impact of incarceration on crime prevention can also be seen by comparing the effects of prison incarceration and policing. If we were to spend an additional dollar on policing rather than incarceration, we could prevent 3.5 to 7 times as many crimes. Of course, additional policing is only one possible alternative to incarceration. Researchers and policymakers can and should explore many policy options.

As California’s major public safety reform continues to unfold, our work highlights the need for the state and the counties to consider a variety of ways to handle their public safety responsibilities effectively and cost-efficiently.