Tag: realignment

Crime Rates Down, But Not Everywhere

Most of California’s counties saw lower crime rates in 2013, according to the latest data. Violent crime dropped in 41 out of the 58 counties, and property crime dropped in 37 counties. In some counties the decreases are substantial. For example, property and violent crime rates in Merced County dropped by 20.4% and 15.8%, respectively, while Napa experienced declines of 10.8% and 14.7%.

While news of improved public safety is unquestionably good, crime experts will point out that understanding year-to-year changes is difficult. That’s particularly true for small counties, where just a few criminal incidents can dramatically affect crime rates. Larger counties are less sensitive to this, by virtue of their size alone, so looking at changes in crime rates in the state’s largest counties provides a meaningful focus.

Here, too, the news is mostly good—most of the state’s large counties saw drops in crime rates in 2013. This appears to be part of a longer trend (2012 was an exception). Violent crime dropped in 14 out of the state’s 15 largest counties, which include more than four-fifths of California’s total population. The property crime rate decreased in 11 out of the 15 largest counties. Again, some of the drops are substantial. For example, Orange and Sacramento Counties saw decreases of 10% and 9.4% in property crime, and their violent crime rates dropped by 11.9% and 7%.

However, not all large counties saw improvements in 2013. One county’s recent trend differs noticeably: San Francisco. Even as property and violent crime rates reached 10-year lows in Los Angeles, Orange, and Sacramento Counties, San Francisco’s reached 10-year highs. The recent increase is surprising. The county appeared to be in good shape to handle the new responsibilities—most centrally, managing lower-level felons—given to all counties under California’s public safety realignment. San Francisco is often regarded as innovative in its strategies to prevent re-offending. It is also a county that does not face jail capacity constraints. More broadly, San Francisco has seen a shift toward a wealthier population and has a strong and growing economy—indicators that usually point to less crime.

Right now, it is difficult to say what is behind San Francisco’s troubling crime trend, but it is possible that some features unique to the county are contributing factors. One of these features is the relatively high proportion of non-residents in San Francisco at any point in time. For example, if there is an increase in the number of tourists and commuting workers, then the number of potential crime victims (which may attract more offenders) also increases. But crime rates are based only on the number of county residents—they do not take into account changes in non-residential population. So an increase in the number of reported crimes could partially be driven by an increase in the number of visitors, including tourists and commuting workers. Estimates based on Census data show that commuting workers add about 162,000 to the daytime population of San Francisco. That’s more commuters than any other county in California—including Los Angeles County, which is roughly 12 times larger.

It’s still not clear if changes in the non-resident population are driving up San Francisco’s crime rates—the recent increase in residential burglary suggests other crime-related factors could be involved. Changes in the number of cops, policing strategies, sentencing and incarceration decisions, jail capacity, and approaches to reduce re-offending are all factors that may affect county crime rates and trends.

This brief mini-analysis of San Francisco’s crime trends is admittedly speculative, and it points toward the difficulty of interpreting these trends—as well as the need for more research, which would allow us to better understand the underlying factors of crime and crime trends in California. PPIC is committed to continuing such efforts.

(TOP CHART) Source: Author calculations based on the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California Crimes and Clearances Files, 2004–2013. Note: Violent crime includes homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

(BOTTOM CHART) Source: Author calculations based on the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California Crimes and Clearances Files, 2004–2013. Note: Property crime includes burglary, motor vehicle theft, and larceny theft (including non-felonious larceny theft).

PPIC’s Role in a Changing State

California is changing quickly and in ways that touch the lives of all of its residents. The state has enrolled millions of people in health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act. It is moving ahead to expand the cap-and-trade program that is a cornerstone of AB 32, the landmark law mandating a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

In K–12 education, California is implementing two sweeping policy changes at the same time. New English and math standards, called the Common Core, require big changes in what is taught in the classroom. A new school funding formula, the Local Control Funding Formula, gives districts increased flexibility over spending and provides extra money for disadvantaged students.

Historic changes are playing out in the corrections system as well. Realignment, which shifted responsibilities for many offenders from the state to the local level, has had a significant impact on the state, counties, and communities.

Amid these policy shifts, California is coping with a major drought that has focused attention on the state’s need to improve its water management.

These changes are also taking place in an election year—and California’s elections have also undergone major changes. This is the first election in which state constitutional officers, such as governor and controller, will be elected under the top-two primary system.

At PPIC we are focused on monitoring and analyzing the impact of these changes—both short and long term—and examining other steps the state can take to meet its critical challenges. In recent months, we have delivered objective, nonpartisan research on all of these topics. We plan to release many more publications in the months ahead. Our PPIC Statewide Survey will continue to give California residents a voice in the policy changes that affect them, as it has since 1998. The PPIC blog provides regular updates on the impact of the drought, as well as news and analysis on a range of policy topics from our experts.

Through our extensive outreach, we have hosted discussions on these important topics and more. We invited California’s two top legislative leaders to share their priorities for the upcoming session. At another recent event, the two secretary of state candidates talked about how they would improve elections and increase voter participation, if elected. Both of these events were webcast live to engage Californians from all over the state.

We encourage you to sign up for our announcements to learn about future events. We hope you’ll stay up to date with our publications and videos by signing up for our monthly e-bulletin, following us on social media, and subscribing to the PPIC blog.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.

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.

Recidivism and Realignment

Early feedback is starting to come in about corrections realignment, the 2011 shift of responsibility for more than 30,000 criminal offenders from the state level to the counties. The issue continues to dominate discussion in the California public safety community. But there are still many questions to be answered about how counties are implementing the changes and what effect realignment is having on criminal behavior.

Last Friday, research fellow Ryken Grattet spoke at a Sacramento briefing about PPIC’s latest research, which looked at recidivism rates for released offenders now being supervised by county probation departments. The study found that offenders released to counties that emphasized reentry services did better than those released to counties that emphasized traditional law enforcement, at least in the first months after realignment. After the briefing, Grattet was joined in the question-and-answer period by his coauthor, research fellow Mia Bird.

Realignment: Progress and Challenges

Expectations were high when California rolled out public safety realignment in October 2011; many expressed optimism that the reform would significantly address prison overcrowding and reduce the state’s high recidivism rate.

Now that realignment is approaching the three-year mark, has the reform delivered? In some important ways, yes, it has. But a fundamental issue remains: the state still relies heavily on costly incarceration with limited crime preventive effects.

Realignment shifted responsibility for most lower-level felons from the state to the counties and reduced the state prison population by an impressive 27,000. Although most newly sentenced lower-level felons are serving their sentences in county jail instead of state prison, the majority of the prison population drawdown has been accomplished by essentially halting the practice of sending parole violators back to state prison. The one-year return-to-prison rate for released offenders has dropped by about 33 percentage points (from around 41% to about 8%).

Clearly some parole violators are serving time in county jails (there is no currently available statewide data on county sanctioning of parole or probation violations), but the reform’s stricter limit on how violations can be punished means that offenders now have more “street time.” Also contributing, counties now pay for sanctioning and many have limited jail space.

Importantly, our recent recidivism report shows that decreased reliance on incarceration as a sanction has not been accompanied by an increase in re-offending. In fact one-year re-arrest rates have come down by about 2 percentage points (from 61% to around 59%). In other words, significant reduction in the prison population and halting the use of prison as a sanction for parole violations and minor criminal offenses has moved corrections practices in the right direction in a very meaningful way.

However, the prison population is still above the federal limit, and it has recently started to increase. Furthermore, the reduction in the state prison population has been partially offset by an increase in the county jail population. The shift has put pressure on county jails, where the population has increased by about 11,000 since the October 2011 reform rollout and is continuing to grow.

In other words, the state prison system is still under pressure and now county jails face new challenges. Addressing these challenges solely by building more jails will be fiscally painful and is not likely to be a cost-effective way to prevent crime. Instead, the state needs to identify and implement alternative effective crime prevention strategies. This includes, as intended by the reform, targeted efforts guided by evidence-based practices to reduce re-offending. Among other things, this will require the state to support efforts to gather the data necessary to identify what works in California. But even if these efforts are successful, basic forces like population growth and fiscal stress are likely to force the state to consider sentencing reform and take a closer look at who we incarcerate and for how long.

Big Policy Shift Leads to Small Change in Recidivism

A recent briefing in Sacramento focused on PPIC’s new report on recidivism rates since public safety realignment policy began. This policy—which took effect in 2011—shifted responsibility for more than 30,000 offenders from the state to the local level.

The report—Is Public Safety Realignment Reducing Recidivism in California?—found a mixed result. Arrest rates overall are down slightly from the period before realignment. But the proportion of offenders who are convicted after arrest is up about 3 percent. The proportion of those arrested multiple times is up noticeably, probably reflecting the increased time released offenders spend on the streets because of county jails’ limited capacity.

The number of released offenders who return to prison was down more than 30 percent. PPIC research fellow Magnus Lofstrom presented the findings. He was joined on the dais by his two co-authors—PPIC research fellow Ryken Grattet and UC Berkeley policy professor Steven Raphael—for audience questions.

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.

State Leaders: More Data Needed on Rehabilitation Efforts

As Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) put it, the odyssey of California’s corrections system during the past decade would be a wonderful topic for a Ph.D. thesis: it would cover the separation of powers, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the evolution of one of the nation’s largest prison systems. Steinberg’s comments were made Monday during a PPIC Speaker Series on California’s Future event at the Sheraton Grand in Sacramento, which drew an audience of several hundred in person and online.

Steinberg was joined by Assemblymember Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), the vice chairwoman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, and Matthew Cate, the director of the California State Association of Counties. The discussion was moderated by PPIC President Mark Baldassare.

This event occurred at a time when California is working to comply with a court order to reduce the prison population by February 2016. The state has recently directed more than $1 billion toward new jail beds at the local level. But state policymakers are also focusing on alternatives to incarceration that will reduce recidivism, deter criminal behavior, and save money.

“I maintain very strongly that unless we begin significantly redirecting resources from leasing prison and jail space to substance abuse and mental health care and treatment that we may reach that magic number at one point in time, but we will not maintain it,” Steinberg said.

The bipartisan panel found considerable agreement on the need to increase rehabilitation efforts, particularly those aimed at youthful offenders or at-risk youth. Steinberg said he would like to see the $81 million in Governor Brown’s proposed budget doubled, and Melendez agreed that the amount in the proposed budget was insufficient. The state is also considering another $500 million for new jail beds in this year’s budget, and Steinberg suggested that counties should have discretion about whether those funds might be better spent on mental health beds or other intervention services.

The panel also gave a strong endorsement of better data collection on realignment-related programs—currently, not enough is known about how intervention programs are performing or which ones work best.

“We have a lot of programs out there, and no one seems to be able to tell me if they work,” Melendez said.

The panel also addressed identifying metrics for success—defining key measures, such as recidivism, can be a challenge. Cate said there are multiple measures of recidivism —arrest, conviction, prison—but each one can tell a different story.