Understanding the Impact of California’s Realignment of Corrections on Race and Ethnic Minority Group Offenders

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

In response to the 2011 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Plata, California adopted two measures, AB109 and AB117, collectively known as “Realignment.” Realignment took effect on October 1, 2011, shifting responsibility for certain low-level offenders, previously the responsibility of the state, to California counties. This project will document how Realignment has affected the racial distribution of felony releases from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) using a de-identified dataset supplied by CDCR containing prison releases from Oct 1, 2009 through June 30, 2013, their demographics, and custody histories. Given that nationwide, blacks and Latinos are disproportionately likely to be committed to prison for violent crimes (Carson and Golinelli, 2013), we might expect Realignment to place disproportionately more minorities in prison and on state parole. If we find higher percentages of minority group offenders in the parole cohorts after Realignment than before, this would support a finding that Realignment, although not intentional, differentially places offenders of color at the highest levels of correctional control in California. The effectiveness and unintended consequences of California’s Realignment legislation will determine whether decentralization is a viable template for alleviating prison overcrowding in other states.

Authors

• Bradley Jerome Bartos, University of California, Irvine

• Susan Turner, University of California, Irvine