Public Safety Realignment and Recidivism

• In Event: California Prison Realignment and Pathways into Prison in New York

Abstract

California’s 2011 public safety realignment (AB 109) was primarily motivated by a three-judge panel mandate to reduce overcrowding in California’s expensive prison system. However, and not unrelated, it was also prompted by the need to implement more effective strategies to address the state’s high recidivism rate, one of the highest in the country, and a key contributor to prison overcrowding. In this paper, we consider whether recidivism patterns have been altered by realignment. We analyze individual level administrative data on arrests, convictions, and returns to state prison in the pre- and post-realignment periods to assess how realignment has impacted recidivism outcomes for former state prisoners. Accounting for compositional changes in pre and post-realignment release cohorts, we find there is a considerable decline in the proportion of releases that are returned to state prison within one year, on the order of 33 percentage points. Likelihood of arrest within one year also decreases, though the decline is smaller when one adjusts for the fact that there are fewer re-releases in the post-realignment period. Finally, we find a small yet statistically significant increase in the proportion of releases convicted for a new crime (of about 1.2 percentage points). Nearly all of this increase is driven by an increase in convictions for felony crime. Our findings suggest that California’s realignment has made substantial progress on one of its main goals, which is to reduce the use of prison as a sanction for parole violations and minor criminal offenses. Although we do not observe dramatic increases in arrests and convictions in the aftermath of realignment, we also do not see dramatic decreases either. Rates of arrest and conviction remain quite high. This fact, along with the reduced reliance on incarceration and the corresponding increase in “street time” highlights the need for improvements in the ability of law enforcement to deter and community corrections programs effectively connect offenders to rehabilitative services. Without such improvements it is likely that the high rates of arrest and conviction will persist, despite the dramatic changes realignment has brought about.

Authors

• Magnus Lofstrom, Public Policy Institute of California

• Steve Raphael, University of California, Berkeley

• Ryken Grattet, University of California, Davis