Tag: rehabilitation

Video: The Impact of Proposition 47 on Crime and Recidivism

Proposition 47, passed by voters in November 2014, has generated considerable debate. By reducing penalties for some lower-level drug and property offenses, Prop 47 marked another significant step toward reducing California’s reliance on incarceration. Supporters of the reform believe that redirecting money that is no longer being spent on incarceration to behavioral health and other treatment programs would reduce recidivism. Opponents feared that Prop 47 would overburden local law enforcement and lead to increases in crime.

A panel discussion in Sacramento last Thursday encapsulated this debate—but also featured significant areas of agreement. PPIC researcher Mia Bird set the scene by outlining a new report, The Impact of Proposition 47 on Crime and Recidivism. The report finds no evidence that Prop 47 has affected violent crime rates but sees signs that it led to a rise in property crime—driven largely by thefts from motor vehicles. The report also finds a decline in recidivism, driven largely by a drop in rearrest and reconviction rates for offenders covered by Prop 47.

Bird pointed out that “Prop 47 likely sent a signal to law enforcement to reprioritize their resources away from arrests for drug possession toward more serious offenses.”

Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer underlined this point. “Whenever you have laws that take away your ability to arrest certain individuals for a felony, and you know there’s no room in the jail for misdemeanants, you shift your resources [toward] violent criminals.”

For George Gascón, San Francisco’s district attorney, “Prop 47 is a mild beginning of a process where we go back and see where we want to put public resources.” He pointed out that the negative impact of high rates of incarceration has been felt primarily in communities of color, and added that recent crime fluctuations need to be placed in the context of historically low crime rates over the past several years.

For Dyer, reclassifying some drug and property crimes as misdemeanors means that there are “no consequences for individuals who are committing crimes.” Dyer also noted that when Prop 47 passed, local law enforcement was still adjusting to the realignment of corrections responsibilities that was enacted three years earlier. The pace of reform has felt like “trying to take a drink of water out of a fire hose.”

While the panelists had differing views on the state’s shift away from incarceration, they agreed on the importance of treatment programs for mental health and substance abuse disorders. Gascón noted that with funding from Prop 47, “communities are beginning to experiment with different ways of treating the drug addiction and mental health issues that drive many crimes.” Dyer agreed, noting that “jail is no place for people with mental health issues.”

Kate Howard, executive director of the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC), explained how the BSCC developed a process for allocating 65% of the money saved by reductions in incarceration to local programs. The BSCC sought input from across the state, and the grant steering committee includes several ex-offenders, whose experience with the corrections system was “instrumental.” The first 23 grants were awarded in June 2017. While it is too early to measure their impact, Howard said there is “great reason for optimism.”

Tailoring Domestic Violence Programs to Reduce Recidivism

California law requires that all domestic violence offenders who receive a probation sentence participate in a one-year rehabilitation program. A bill (AB 372) currently under consideration in the state legislature would allow five counties (Napa, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Yolo) to pilot a new kind of treatment program tailored to offenders’ risks—their likelihood of reoffending—and needs. This program must include practices that are shown by research to be effective or promising in terms of reducing recidivism.

Domestic violence is a serious public health and safety issue that affects families, communities, and criminal justice systems. Drawing on data collected in 12 California counties through the BSCC–PPIC Multi-County Study, we find domestic violence offenders make up a significant share of local jail populations. From October 2011 to October 2014, 6% of all jail bookings were associated with domestic violence. After the passage of Proposition 47—which reclassified certain drug and property offenses to misdemeanors—in 2014, domestic violence accounted for roughly 8% of jail bookings.

Domestic violence offenders also tend to have high rates of recidivism. Three-fifths of individuals convicted of domestic violence are rearrested within two years—and 67% of this group are rearrested for another domestic violence offense. The large volume of domestic violence offenses combined with high recidivism rates highlight the need to understand and address the factors underlying these offenses.

The demographics and criminal histories of domestic violence offenders vary greatly—suggesting that effective interventions may differ as well. When we examine individuals who received probation sentences between October 2011 and October 2015, the majority (85%) of offenders are men. However, women still represent a significant share of the population, and treatment needs may vary based on gender. In addition, while most of these offenders are age 35 or younger (the average age is 34), a sizable minority are age 46 or above. Older offenders may have distinct needs compared to younger offenders, as problematic relationship patterns may be more difficult to address over time.

Criminal history background may also help determine appropriate interventions. Among domestic violence offenders receiving probation sentences, 18% were convicted of felonies and 82% were convicted of misdemeanors. We find that domestic violence offenders have an average of nine prior arrests for any kind of offense. On average, these offenders have one prior domestic violence arrest; 53% have no prior arrests for domestic violence, while 5% have six or more priors.

This variation suggests that tailoring domestic violence programs based on offenders’ risks and needs could be beneficial. However, there is much to learn. Any effort to address this important problem should include substantial program monitoring and data collection on participants’ characteristics and outcomes—creating the opportunity to learn about effective practices and potentially apply them statewide.

New Laws Expand Criminal Justice Reforms

Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a number of bills that extend the state’s efforts to reform California’s adult and juvenile criminal justice system. This legislative package supplements previous reforms; several of the new laws could further reduce the state’s prison population, which remains subject to a court-ordered population target. The bills cover issues at all levels, including arrest, conviction, incarceration, and parole.

Arrest and conviction

  • SB 395 strengthens protections for arrested minors under the age of 16 by requiring that they confer with an attorney prior to waiving their Miranda rights and being interrogated by police. AB 529 allows juveniles to have their records sealed if they are not convicted. SB 312 allows juvenile offenders convicted of serious or violent offenses committed after the age of 14 to have their records sealed.
  • SB 393 allows adults to request that the court seal their records if they are arrested but not convicted.

Sentence enhancements

  • Sentence enhancements allow prosecutors to seek additional prison time in certain circumstances—such as the use of a firearm or gang involvement. The number of enhancements has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. SB 180 eliminates the three-year sentence enhancement for certain circumstances related to selling drugs, though it leaves in place the enhancement for using minors in the sale of illegal drugs. SB 620 allows judges the discretion to dismiss or strike sentence enhancements for offenders who are in possession of a firearm while committing a crime.

Parole

  • AB 1308 and SB 394 raise the age limit for youth parole from 23 to 25, and grant the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders serving life sentences after they serve at least 25 years.
  • AB 1448 allows certain offenders older than 60 who have been incarcerated for more than 25 years to be released to parole. It is worth noting that AB 1448 codifies a practice that has been helping the state reduce overcrowding: a total of 557 offenders were released under this program between February 2014 and August 2017.

Impact of supervision on juveniles and families

  • SB 625 reinstates honorable discharges for juvenile offenders who have “proven their ability to desist from criminal behavior.” An honorable discharge removes long-term penalties, such as the ban on juvenile offenders working as police officers.
  • SB 190 limits the financial liability of families for the housing, transport, or supervision of juvenile offenders.

The goal of these laws is to improve offender outcomes by emphasizing rehabilitation and reentry to the community—and possibly reducing pressure on the state budget. State lawmakers believe these bills are grounded in evidence-based practices. For example, the reduction of long-term penalties for juveniles and young adults is grounded in neuroscientific evidence that decision-making ability does not mature fully until the mid-20s.

Two bills that aim to reform the state’s bail system, AB 42 and SB 10, did not reach the governor’s desk this legislative year. However, the debate over bail reform will most likely continue in 2018. Advocates for reform believe that evidence-based practices that base pre-trial release decisions on an offender’s likelihood of appearing in court or reoffending—not his or her financial means—could significantly reduce the number of pre-trial offenders held in county jails. Opponents believe that the current bail system is the best way to make pre-trial release decisions while protecting public safety.

Next Steps for Proposition 57

The passage of Proposition 57 brings significant changes to California’s criminal justice system. At the same time, the initiative lacks specificity and there is great uncertainty about what its impact might be.

The measure increases the chances for parole of felons in state prison who are convicted of nonviolent crimes and expand inmates’ opportunities to earn credits for good behavior. This loosening of parole rules will ease prison overcrowding through the early release of thousands of inmates. Less controversially, it will also allow judges, rather than prosecutors, to decide if juvenile defendants over age 14 can be tried in adult court.

Proposition 57’s impact will depend on which inmates will be eligible for parole, how early they are released, and the effectiveness of the new credits—which will depend, in part, on whether the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has the capacity to immediately provide effective rehabilitative programs.

The initiative is the latest of a number of reforms adopted since 2009, when a federal court issued a mandate to reduce overcrowding in the state’s prison system to improve inmate health care. Over the past several years, the total prison population has declined by about 41,000. At 113,700, the institutional population is now almost 2,200 below the court-mandated target of 137.5% of design capacity. Early in 2016, however, the prison population began to increase, and is now about 1,900 higher than it was at the end of January. If this average monthly increase of more than 200 inmates continues, the prison population could be above the mandated target within a year.

Proposition 57 gives CDCR two tools to address this population pressure. First, it makes prison inmates serving time for “non-violent” felonies eligible for parole consideration after serving the full sentence for their primary offenses, without having to serve time for additional crimes or enhancements, such as gang affiliation or prior felonies. But it is not clear which specific crimes will make inmates ineligible for early parole. The list of 23 violent felonies in the state penal code does not include crimes such as assault with a deadly weapon, certain rapes, and some gang crimes.

If eligibility is extended to those who have not been convicted of these 23 violent offenses, the Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) estimates that about 30,000 inmates currently in state prison would be eligible for early parole, as would an additional 7,500 inmates admitted in each year thereafter. However, the number of inmates who will be granted early release will almost certainly be lower than 30,000. The CDCR has the discretion to determine eligibility, and eligible inmates will be granted parole based on their assessed risk to public safety by the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH). There were 5,300 parole suitability hearings in 2015, and BPH granted parole to only 906 inmates, a rate of about 17%.

Second, and importantly, the initiative gives CDCR authority to award credits for good behavior and rehabilitative or educational achievements. In addition to reducing the prison population, the incentive of early release based on completion of programs aimed at reducing the likelihood of reoffending is also likely to increase inmate demand for approved rehabilitative or educational programming.

The proposition’s advocates hope that more effective programming combined with incentives to participate will better prepare inmates for reentry into the community. They also hope it will lower the state’s high recidivism rates—we recently reported that about two-thirds of inmates released from prison are rearrested within two years and about two-fifths are re-convicted of a new crime.

It will be up to the CDCR secretary to determine which programs are credit-eligible and the size of the credit inmates would receive for participating. It is unclear whether CDCR will have the capacity to meet new demand for these programs—this will be crucial to implementing Proposition 57.

A key question to be answered in the years to come is whether Proposition 57 will affect crime rates. To answer it, we need to know how many inmates are released early, who they are, and to what extent they complete effective programming.

For all of the unknowns, one aspect of Proposition 57 is clear: it does push the state to focus on evaluating, implementing, and meeting the demand for evidence-based programs that help inmates prepare for successful reentry into the community.

Video: Rating Realignment

Local law enforcement and corrections officials have risen to the challenge of public safety realignment, a panel of local and state officials concluded last week. They also concurred that big challenges remain.

Four years ago, local officials had to adapt—and adapt quickly—to this historic policy shift in California. Prompted by a federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding, the state shifted responsibility for incarcerating and supervising low-level felons from the state to the counties, based on the idea that the locals could do a better job. The panelists at a PPIC event in Sacramento assessed the hurdles they’ve had to overcome and the challenges that remain.

“We’ve adapted and we are adapting,” said Lee Seale, Sacramento County’s chief probation officer. “We’re better as a result of it,” he said, noting that hundreds of offenders are enrolled in drug treatment or other rehabilitative programming who did not get these services before. Among the issues corrections officials are still coping with, according to Seale and the other panelists, is a jail population with many challenges, including mental health issues.

Linda Penner, chair of the Board of State and Community Corrections, serves as the governor’s liaison on realignment issues with county law enforcement officials statewide. When realignment began, she was the chief probation officer of Fresno County. She likened the magnitude and speed of realignment to “drinking from a fire hose.”

“Counties had to demonstrate their nimbleness and creativity,” she said. Initially, case files were transferred from the state to the county using manila envelopes because computer systems were incompatible. The incompatibility problem was resolved in about a year, she said.

Adam Christianson, now serving his third term as sheriff of Stanislaus County, was a realignment skeptic. The governor, he said, knew him as “the difficult sheriff from Stanislaus County.” His county’s jail was already at maximum capacity before realignment began. The jail, built in 1954, had no space for treatment or the programs that realignment’s proponents envisioned as key in reducing recidivism.

Things have changed, he said, and so has the department’s culture. The county is building new facilities with program and treatment areas, classroom space, and a mental health care unit. Partnerships with community-based organizations—which the sheriff says are essential—are helping the county provide program opportunities for offenders.

As a result, he said, “The difficult sheriff from Stanislaus County isn’t so difficult anymore.”

Before the discussion, PPIC senior fellow Magnus Lofstrom presented the findings of Public Safety Realignment: Impacts So Far, which he authored with PPIC research associate Brandon Martin.

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.