{"id":23526,"date":"2016-05-19T13:28:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T20:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=23526"},"modified":"2016-05-19T13:29:17","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T20:29:17","slug":"mass-reduction-california-prison-population-didnt-cause-rise-crime-two-studies-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=23526","title":{"rendered":"Mass reduction of California prison population didn\u2019t cause rise in crime, two studies find"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Tom Jackman<\/a><\/span> May 18<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
<\/a><\/div>\n
By Tom Jackman<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Jose Gonzalez, 36, was released from a California prison after serving 17 years for murder, under a new plan to reduce massive prison overcrowding there. (Jabin Botsford\/The Washington Post)<\/span><\/div>\n

\"washingtonpost\"After California\u2019s prison population reached the crisis stage of overcrowding \u2014 with some prisons at 300 percent capacity\u00a0\u2014 the state in 2011 began to parole thousands of inmates to their original counties. Within 15 months, more than 27,500 inmates had been \u201crealigned\u201d from state prisons to county jails or to parole in what was called \u201can act of mass forgiveness<\/a> unprecedented in U.S. history.\u201d This led to the understandable fear that suddenly returning thousands of convicts to the streets would cause a spike in crime.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n

Two detailed studies that examined crime in California, including one released last week by the journal of the American Society of Criminology, found that when considering the patterns of crime nationally and in California between 2010 and 2014, there was little or no deviation in the crime rate after the mass prisoner release. The new study, \u201cIs Downsizing Prisons Dangerous?\u201d by criminology professors Jody Sundt, Emily J. Salisbury and Mark G. Harmon, found that auto theft did rise somewhat in 2012 and 2013, but by 2014 it had fallen back to the norm.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn astounding 17 percent reduction in the size of the California prison population,\u201d Sundt\u2019s study concluded, \u201chad no effect on aggregate rates of violent or property crime.\u201d The study said that California\u2019s initial, full-throated embrace of incarceration as a means to fight crime, such as the notorious \u201cThree Strikes\u201d law, \u201cmay affect crime, but it does so at a high social, human and economic cost and is far less cost-effective than alternatives. Moreover, there is now evidence that prison populations can be safely reduced without harming the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMass incarceration\u201d has become one of the key topics in the ongoing dispute about justice reform in America. The U.S. has more inmates per capita than any other country. We have more jails than colleges. And California took its drastic steps only after ordered to do so by the Supreme Court. But since the initial realignment, California voters also approved Proposition 47, which reclassified many drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, further lightening the load on the state prison system. The fact that these studies are not finding a severe, or any, impact on crime after a mass release of prisoners adds a significant piece to the conversation about how America handles incarceration.<\/p>\n

Sundt said in an interview Tuesday that there had not been any reports of a particularly horrible incident by a parolee from the realignment plan, which could have caused a backlash against the program. \u201cPeople are really scared to make policy changes,\u201d Sundt said, \u201cbecause it just takes one horrific case\u201d to create a new controversy.<\/p>\n

[California undertakes an unprecedented experiment in mass forgiveness<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n

The policy change of reducing overcrowding was mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2011 that California\u2019s prison system amounted to \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d and required the state to reduce its overall population from 181 percent of capacity to 137.5 percent in two years, or about 33,000 inmates. The California legislature then passed a \u201crealignment plan\u201d which applied only to a certain set of prisoners: those convicted of non-violent, non-sex-related and non-serious crimes.<\/p>\n

Prisoners in the \u201cnon-non-non\u201d group could be returned to their original counties for either time in the county jail or parole, and those who had committed violent crimes while younger than 23 could be considered for parole. Those on parole or probation would have their supervision times shortened to a maximum of six months, and parole violators would go only to jail, not back to prison. (Jails are different from prisons, and the terms are not interchangeable. Jails are run by counties or smaller municipalities and designed to hold only those awaiting trial and those sentenced to a year or less of incarceration. Prisons are run by states and intended to hold those convicted of felonies with more than a year of incarceration.)<\/p>\n

Both a 2013 study<\/a> by Magnus Lofstrom and Steven Raphael from the Public Policy Institute of California and the new Sundt study found a marked increase in auto theft after the mass releases, of as many as 130 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2012, or a 13 percent rise. But the rate rose by only 66 incidents in 2013, a seven percent rise, and no increase by 2014.<\/p>\n

But for violent crime, \u201cthere is no evidence that the Realignment Act had an immediate effect on violent crime rates,\u201d Sundt wrote. In 2013, as compared to 2010, there was a negligible increase in violent crime \u2013 murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault \u2013 and in 2014, realignment was associated with a decrease of about 9.5 incidents per 100,000 residents.<\/p>\n

Within 15 months of California passing the realignment law, savings from the reduced prison population totaled $453 million in 2012 alone, state statistics show, and \u201cthere was no adverse effect on the overall safety of Californians,\u201d Sundt wrote.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tom Jackman May 18 By Tom Jackman Jose Gonzalez, 36, was released from a California prison after serving 17 years for murder, under a new plan to reduce massive prison overcrowding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16,456],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-home-main-slider","category-video-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nMass reduction of California prison population didn\u2019t cause rise in crime, two studies find<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Tom Jackman May 18 By Tom Jackman Jose Gonzalez, 36, was released from a California prison after serving 17 years for murder, under a new plan to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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