Statistics suggest reforms work
Voters must focus on drivers of crime, not just on sentencing
No government responsibility is greater, or perhaps more difficult to achieve, than public safety. Decision makers must face the fact that sentencing policy does not deter crime and get serious about adopting policies that will.
It’s been more than a decade since California’s prison system was declared in a state of emergency. As a result of a spate of tough-on-crime policies, California’s prison population had reached 200 percent of capacity, even after the state built 23 prisons, resulting in dangerous conditions and preventable deaths, all at substantial and growing taxpayer expense. In response, state leaders reformed parole and sentencing laws; voters approved Propositions 36, 47 and 57; and the incarcerated population dropped precipitously, tempering the crisis.
These reforms, however, have not been uniformly welcomed. Similar to the tenor of public debate that led to drastic incarceration increases in prior decades, politicians, pundits and some criminal justice officials have responded by predicting unprecedented crime waves and attributing horrific crimes to sentencing changes.
In the most recent example, a Los Angeles Times investigation discovered that key decisions by local officials contributed to the shocking death of a police officer, not criminal justice reform as had been blamed. An initiative that would roll back reforms failed to qualify for the 2018 ballot though proponents did manage to qualify for the 2020 ballot an initiative to roll back Props. 47 and 57.
Despite the rhetoric, the data present a different reality. Just this week, the California Department of Justice released the annual statewide criminal justice data reports finding that property crime has declined for the second year in a row, with the violent crime rate per 100,000 people remaining largely steady at a 1.5 percent increase. Overall, despite local variances, crime rates in California remain historically low and have been in steady decline since 1993.
There are a few reasons a focus on sentencing is ineffective as a crime-control measure: First, punishment does not reliably deter crime. Studies conclude that sentencing laws do not affect the behavior of most people committing crime and that incarceration without rehabilitation leads to recidivism.
Second, most crime is not entering the justice system in the first instance. Only about half of crimes committed nationally are reported. Of those reported, less than half result in convictions. In California, in 2016, fewer than half of reported violent crimes and only 10 percent of reported property crimes were cleared. (This has been true for decades.) To focus crime policy on sentencing — when most crime incidents are not sentenced at all — is the tail wagging the dog.
A decisive body of research shows that zeroing in on community stability can more effectively stop the cycle of crime.
Many of the drivers of crime are knowable, and preventable: mental health crises, substance abuse, unaddressed trauma, and housing and economic instability. Innovative solutions exist. Programs that combine housing and treatment for chronically homeless people cycling in and out of both jails and emergency rooms can reduce burdens on these systems and recidivism among participants. Trauma recovery centers that provide holistic support to victims can improve survivors’ stability and life outcomes. Street intervention programs that partner community leaders with social service and law enforcement can reduce violence and improve trust.
Despite knowing what works, California’s imbalanced public safety investments continue to be, at best, ignoring the cycle of crime and, at worst, subsidizing it. Taxpayers spend more than $11 billion yearly on prisons, which is a 500 percent increase since 1981 and represents more than the general fund budgets of the University of California and California State University systems combined.
We’ve seen time and again that voters want new priorities. It’s time to focus our attention on the real drivers of crime and re-prioritize to adequately address them. We cannot continue spending billions of dollars on prisons while the best strategies to address crime receive marginal funding, only able to reach a fraction of vulnerable people. We must reallocate public safety resources to prevention, mental health, substance abuse, housing, trauma recovery and more.
Reforms to date have alleviated crises, but as long as taxpayers are saddled with costly and ineffective prisons, true community safety will remain unattainable.