Crime rise not due to Prop. 47, study says

Effect of lesser sentences on minor offenses disputed

Crime in California increased in 2015, the year after voters reduced penalties for many drug and theft offenses. But a new study concludes the ballot measure, Proposition 47, did not cause crime to rise — findings a prosecutors’ group sharply disputes.

Researchers at UC Irvine compared 2015 crime rates in California to the rates in other states whose levels of specific crimes, like homicide, rape and larceny, had been virtually identical to California’s from 1970 through 2014.

They found that the 2015 rates in those comparison states were the same as California’s rates for violent crimes. While California appeared to have somewhat higher rates of larceny and motor vehicle theft in 2015 than those other states, the differences do not appear to be significant, the researchers said.

“The question isn’t whether crime went up,

but what caused crime to go up,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine. “Our analysis tells us Prop. 47 was not responsible, so it must have been something else,” such as poverty, inequality, guns or drugs. She said it was the first systematic analysis of the ballot measure’s effect on crime rates and has been reviewed by top scholars in the field.

“What the measure did do was cause less harm and suffering to those charged with crime,” Kubrin said. “It’s good to cut criminal justice costs, especially when that money can be earmarked for crime prevention programs.”

The report drew an immediate rebuttal from the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, a group of Los Angeles County prosecutors that opposed Prop. 47 and is supporting a proposed initiative to partially overturn it.

The initiative, being circulated for the November ballot, would make a third-time theft of $250 or more a felony punishable by a state prison term. Prop. 47 made all thefts of less than $950 misdemeanors, subject to county jail terms of a year or less. The measure would also allow DNA collection of those convicted of postProp. 47 misdemeanors and would roll back part of Prop. 57, a 2016 ballot measure that made some convicted felons eligible for early parole hearings.

Michele Hanisee, president of the prosecutors group, said the UC Irvine study admits that after Prop. 47 passed, “crime went up, savings on incarceration were minimal and the recidivism rate remains high.”

The post-Prop. 47 statistics on crimes like murder and rape were “irrelevant” because the initiative did not apply to those crimes, she said. But larceny, which had sentences reduced under Prop. 47 for thefts of less than $950, rose in California while declining across the United States, Hanisee said. And she said the study did not even consider drug crimes, whose sentences were also lowered by the 2014 ballot measure.

Asked about the criticism, Kubrin said drug crimes are very difficult to compare from one state to another, because of great variations among drug laws and enforcement and a lack of data. But she said she is confident in the report’s findings that Prop. 47 caused no increase in violent crimes or property crimes, including larceny.

“We collected 44 years of pre-(Prop.) 47 crime data,” Kubrin said. “I knew how politicized this issue was. I stand by the findings 100 percent.”