Evaluating Criminal Legal Reforms and Rollbacks in California

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Over the last decade, California has emerged as a contested battleground in efforts to reform the criminal legal system. In some years, legislators, referendums, and criminal justice agencies have instituted major policy changes that reduce costs of criminal legal involvement and increase transparency; in other years, policymakers, voters, and judges roll back these changes, or implement new approaches that take a more punitive approach to crime control.

Our panel assesses the impact of three such major policy changes across the nation’s largest state. First, Premkumar et al. uses a triple difference framework to assess the impact of bail suspensions on recidivism during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that bail suspensions raised overall rearrest rates but that reinstatement of bail did not reverse these changes. Second, Walia reports on the outcome from an RCT in a public defender’s office in California that assessed whether people with mental health challenges were deterred from court attendance by a new policy of sending consequence-focused court date reminders. And third, Bird uses a differences-in-differences framework to evaluate the effects of a new law that limited felony probation terms to two years on sentencing and recidivism outcomes.

The changes evaluated in this panel promise to inform future criminal legal policymaking across the country. Some reforms, like the suspension of cash bail, may have impacted public safety. On the other hand, efforts to achieve criminal legal reform (e.g., implementing limiting probation limits) appear to have struggled to achieve their intended goals. In assembling these papers, we show how evidence from a diverse set of policy changes will help a diverse range of stakeholders—including policymakers and the public—support new efficient and fair policies that address complex challenges in the criminal legal system.

Policy Area

• Crime, Justice, and Drugs

Chair

• Alex Chohlas-Wood, New York University

Discussants

• Johanna Lacoe, University of California, Berkeley

• Candace Hamilton Hester, American Institutes for Research

Organizer

• Alex Chohlas-Wood, New York University

Individual Presentations

• What Happened When California Suspended Bail? - Presenting Author: Deepak Premkumar, Public Policy Institute of California

• The Effects of California’s New Probation Term Limits on Sentencing and Recidivism Outcomes - Presenting Author: Mia Bird, University of California, Berkeley

• Evaluating Consequence-Focused Court Date Reminders for People with Mental Health Challenges - Presenting Author: Muskan Walia, Harvard University

• Drivers of Homelessness and Drug-Related Health Outcomes in California: Criminal Justice Reforms and Local Factors - Presenting Author: Shannon McConville, Public Policy Institute of California; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Magnus J Lofstrom, Public Policy Institute of California; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Sean Cremin, Public Policy Institute of California