Making it easier for criminals
Recent legislation, ballot measures have made welcome climate for repeat offenders
When California entered the new millennium, it brought with it a growing number of people behind bars.
The burgeoning problem of overcrowding in state prisons ushered in what legislators called an “alternative to incarceration” with the introduction of Proposition 36 in 2000. This enabled sentences served in rehab instead of jail.
But, the issue of over-crowding persisted.
The US Supreme Court, on May 23, 2011, having weighed the impacts of over-crowding on health care awarded to inmates, ordered California to cut its prison population by more than 100 percent in two years.
The Public Safety Realignment initiative (AB 109) became law July 1, 2011.
The initiative enabled inmates convicted of nonviolent, non-serious, and non-sexual crimes with sentences of longer than one year to be housed in county jail instead of state prisons.
It allowed inmates released from such facilities to be placed under county supervision and not state parole.
It also rankled county politicians forced to absorb the state’s redefined prison population.
“The governor and legislature need to face reality and reform these pro-criminal policies,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich told The Signal Thursday.
“We need victim-oriented solutions like we have done in Los Angeles County, such as funding victims services, including counseling and treatment, and establishing local victim restitution and collection for victims of AB 109 offenses.”
The state saw a further softening of rules for jail time in November 2014, when Californians voted in favor of the Proposition 47 ballot measure.
Prop 47 – also called the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act – reduced about two dozen nonviolent felonies such as shoplifting and drug possession to misdemeanors which, typically, carry less jail time, if any jail time at all.
Antonovich had another name for Prop 47 – “a critical public safety threat.”
“It was intended to substitute jail time with treatment for low level drug users,” he said. “In reality, crime rates have increased dramatically and demand for treatment services has declined because treatment is no longer mandated by the courts.
‘Catastrophic’
Antonovich called the cumulative effects of AB 109 and Prop 47 “catastrophic” and blamed them for creating “negative impacts” for the Santa Clarita Valley and the rest of the county.
“State and local governments need concrete reforms in the criminal justice system to revert the catastrophic effects of Assembly Bill 109 and Proposition 47,” he said. “These measures have created new and lasting negative impacts on public safety statewide.
“Assembly Bill 109 shifted thousands of offenders from state parole to county probation supervision,” he said. “The expectation was based on the myth that counties would have better success at reducing recidivism rates of probationers.
“Due to AB 109, county jails across the state, built for maximum sentences of one year, are now flooded with hardened criminals,” he said. “These felons require a higher level of medical and mental health services due to their longer sentences.”
Why is this important to the average Santa Clarita Valley resident?
Because state funding is insufficient to cover the costs, Antonovich said Thursday, forcing counties to do more with less.
Consequently, a litany of agencies dealing with widespread drug abuse, hopelessness and recidivism are re-examining the impacts of legislation aimed at reducing prison over-crowding.
Recidivism is a term used to describe repeat offenders.
Santa Clarita Valley’s top cop, Captain Roosevelt Johnson of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, citing repeat offenders vowed to try and get Prop 47 overturned.
Johnson told The Signal in October that he and others within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are taking names, keeping a log and compiling a list of habitual offenders who exploit loopholes in Prop 47.
The aim of record-taking is to present a compelling case to legislators in Sacramento with the hopes of reversing what he described as the ill effects of Prop 47.
“Proposition 47 reduced possession of narcotics to misdemeanors and that hurt us a lot,” he said in October. “As a result, a significant number of people doing drugs are the same people who are committing burglaries and thefts.
“We want to use all this (documentation) to get Prop 47 overturned,” he said.
Captain Johnson could not be reached for comment over the course of the past month for further comment on recidivism in the SCV.
Prop 47 in SCV
Since Prop 47 became law – reducing about two dozen felony offenses including drug possession to
misdemeanors – the Santa Clarita Valley has seen a staggering number of repeat offenders, according to statistics compiled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and released this week.
Since Nov. 5, 2014, when Californians voted in favor of Prop 47, deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station have arrested 435 people for a crime redefined by the legislation who have since been arrested a second time.
In the 21-month period ending last month, 435 repeat offenders accounted for 845 arrests made in the SCV, according to LASD Chief Steven Johnson who examined a period from Nov. 5, 2015 to July 31, 2016.
“A repeat offender is an offender arrested for any charge, following his or her first arrest with a Proposition 47 charge,” Johnson told The Signal.
The trend reflects a county-wide phenomenon in which 10,424 repeat offenders accounted for 19,057 arrests across Los Angeles County since Prop 47 became law, he said.
Prop 47 task force
In December 2015, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors instructed the county’s Public Defender and its Chief Executive Office to put together a Prop 47 Task force responsible for identifying, contacting and providing legal relief for people eligible to have their felony convictions reduced to misdemeanors.
The county’s Public Defender identified 819,000 “potentially eligible cases,” according to a report presented to supervisors in March by county CEO Sachi A. Hamai.
Since Prop 47 became law, the county’s Public Defender has provided “legal relief” to 25,700 criminals.
Last month, Antonovich and Hilda L. Solis presented a motion to the board called, Proactive Steps Related to Prop 47, which revealed alarming statistics about recidivism.
They noted in their joint motion that: “Recent data collected by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department indicates that a subset of people arrested on Prop 47 charges and subsequently released have gone on to commit further offenses.”
In the 18 months following the passage of Prop 47, more than 400 individuals who have been arrested on a Prop 47 charge have gone on to be arrested more than 10 times apiece, according to the supervisors.
Probation report
The Los Angeles County Department of Probation was one of the agencies directly affected by realignment, releasing inmates onto the street who had their jail sentences redefined. Inmates who previously would have been monitored by the parole system suddenly were monitored by county probation officers.
Two probation officers were assigned to the Santa Clarita Valley in the transition, leaving many to wonder whether that is adequate to deal with the demands of Prop 47.
County statistics paint a picture of intense challenges for probation officers, regardless of their numbers.
In Los Angeles County, the “high risk” and “very high risk” offenders comprise over 68 percent of the population shifted to probation supervision, according to Antonovich.
“Less than 2 percent are deemed ‘low risk.’ Over 45,000 arrests have been made involving just over 30,000 offenders under this program due to their habitual return to criminal activity,” he said.
“Violating terms of supervision should have serious consequences – spending up to one year in prison,” he said. “However, now it is much harder to violate those terms based on AB 109. The consequence is now six months to a few days in county jail, depending on jail overcrowding conditions.”
The probation department is now compiling its own report on the impact AB 109 has had on county probation officers, Probation spokesman Reaver Bingham told The Signal this month.
In a “cursory study” carried out in advance of a more thorough pending report, probation officials were also able to crunch some numbers on the impact of Prop 47, he said.
Between November 2014 and the end of August 2015, more than half the suspects who had their crimes reduced to misdemeanors because of Prop 47 have since been arrested again, Bingham said.
“Of those 1,361 individuals, 59 percent of them sustained at least one new arrest since then,” Bingham said.
The probation department’s full report on the impacts of AB 109, including insights into the effects of Prop 47, is expected to be unveiled this fall.
“The governor and legislature need to face reality and reform these procriminal policies.”
Michael D. Antonovich,
Los Angeles County Supervisor