Former Rep. Xavier Becerra (pictured), D-Los Angeles, was appointed in 2016 by Gov. Jerry Brown to replace state Attorney General Kamala Harris after she was elected to the U.S. Senate. He won a full term in the 2018 elections.

While Becerra joined Brown in backing measures that made the criminal justice system less punitive, he has come in the cross hairs of activists for his interpretation of Senate Bill 1421, which took effect Jan. 1.

The measure, by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, wipes away decades of protections of police discipline records that were adopted by past lawmakers and upheld by courts. It mandates the release of such records if they involve life-threatening or lethal use of force, sexual misconduct and lying in the execution of official duties.

Last year, however, police unions began arguing that Skinner’s law only applies to disciplinary records generated after it took effect Jan. 1 – not to past reports of discipline. However, on Jan. 2, the California Supreme Court denied an emergency request for a delay in implementing the law pending a full review of how the law should be interpreted. This was seen by legal observers as a plain sign that state justices agreed with Skinner, who said the retroactive intent of her law was clear.

Becerra won’t release discipline records of his agents

Nevertheless, police unions representing specific agencies have continued to file lawsuits. In two cases, involving Los Angeles and Richmond police officers, local judges have agreed to a temporary hold on discipline records predating Jan. 1 of this year.

These rulings were cited earlier this month by Supervising Deputy Attorney General Mark Beckington in rejecting a public records request for discipline records of law enforcement agents who work for Becerra.

In an interview with KQED, the Northern California PBS affiliate, the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition blasted Becerra for his department’s decision, saying it sent the wrong message to local agencies and reflected a failure of leadership.

“This is the highest law enforcement officer in the state. He has decided not to disclose records that I think the new law makes very clear should be disclosed,” David Snyder said.

Skinner told KQED that the attorney general’s decision was “puzzling” given that several state law-enforcement agencies complied with the law once it took effect.

But Becerra has rejected criticism, saying that on privacy issues – especially those involving law enforcement officers – he would err on the side of caution.

The controversy has echoes of criticism facing Sen. Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney, as she has launched her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

In her new autobiography, “The Truths We Hold,” and in speeches to progressive groups, Harris has depicted herself as an aggressive advocate of the view that the criminal-justice system is overly punitive and particularly harsh on some minority groups.

Harris critics, defenders fight over her record

But University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon says that doesn’t square with her record as San Francisco DA and state attorney general. In a commentary for the New York Times, Bazelon wrote that Harris was willing to use evidence she knew to be tainted to obtain convictions.

Other reformers have focused on her refusal to support Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that limited prison time for nonviolent crimes, and her opposition to legislation that would have mandated her office conduct independent investigations of fatal police shootings.

Harris’ defenders say this amounts to cherry-picking that ignores key parts of her record. They note she supported a pioneering program in San Francisco that provided resources and counseling to keep first-time drug offenders from ending up in a life of crime. They also note that as attorney general, her agency was the first in the state government to require that its law-enforcement agents wear body cameras.

It’s unclear when the dispute over police discipline records will be resolved. But since lower state courts have reached different decisions on how to interpret Senate Bill 1421, that normally means the issue won’t be resolved without a California Supreme Court ruling.

Nearly 60 percent of voters in 2014 approved Prop. 47, which recategorized certain low-level drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, in an attempt to ease prison overpopulation. 

Since then, many have attempted to link criminal justice reforms like Prop. 47 with a spike in crime in 2015 and 2016. There was even a failed ballot proposal earlier this year that would have rolled back some reforms.

The PPIC found that the two-year rearrest rate for those released after serving sentences for Prop. 47 offenses was almost two points lower than individuals released before the reforms. Meanwhile, the two-year reconviction rate was more than 3 percent lower.

However, the study cautioned that “it is too early to know” how effective Prop. 47’s redirection of funding toward treatment for offenders was.

The study found that much of the purported increase in violent crime post-Prop. 47 was the result of methodological factors, such as police departments in years prior under-reporting violent crimes or the FBI expanding the definition of sexual crimes. Meanwhile, upticks in violence were already starting in 2013 and early 2014, before reforms were enacted.

With property crime, however, the study concluded that Prop. 47 was in part to blame. “It may have contributed to a rise in larceny thefts, which increased by roughly 9 percent (about 135 more thefts per 100,000 residents) compared to other states,” the report read.

Finally, while several thousand inmates were released as a direct result of Prop. 47, the PPIC concluded its effect was more apparent in a shift by law enforcement from arresting potential offenders to citing and releasing them.

Calling itself the California Public Safety Partnership, the group includes Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, and Sacramento County District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert. “These reforms make sure that truly violent criminals stay in jail and don’t get out early,” Schubert told the L.A. Times.

California voters in recent years have rolled back some of the state’s tougher criminal justice laws.

In 2014, Proposition 47 downgraded various nonviolent crimes – such as certain drug offenses and property crimes – from felonies to misdemeanors. The money saved was allocated to crime-prevention programs such as mental health and truancy prevention.

Proposition 57, passed in 2016, allowed those convicted of nonviolent felonies to apply for early parole, in addition to allowing certain inmates to earn credits toward release by participating in rehabilitation programs. These inmates still must go before the parole board.

Both ballot measures passed by comfortable margins.

The proposed initiative would expand the collection of DNA samples to seven misdemeanors that were felonies prior to Prop. 47’s implementation. Currently, DNA is collected only for felonies.

The initiative also makes serial theft – stealing more than $250 or the equivalent after two previous similar convictions – a felony. Under Prop. 47, the current threshold for felonies in cases of theft is $950.

While the measure’s sponsors cite “serious problems being caused by recent criminal justice reforms,” it’s unclear the effect Props. 47 and 57 have had on crime. Violent crime rates for 2016 are up 4.1 percent from 2015, but they are still well below the peak of violent crime rates in 1992, according to the 2016 California Crime Reports. Meanwhile, property crime was down 2.9 percent

The ballot measure’s proponents must obtain 365,880 signatures by the end of April 2018 to qualify for the November 2018 ballot.

The main policy is known as realignment. Pushed through by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, the two new laws allow “non-violent, non-serious and non-sex offenders to serve their sentence in county jails instead of state prisons,” according to an explanation from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The department says that no state prisoners had their time reduced and that the laws did not provide any early releases.

The second policy is Proposition 47, a statewide initiative that passed 60 percent to 40 percent in November 2014. As Ballotpedia explains, the initiative “classified ‘non-serious, nonviolent crimes’ as misdemeanors instead of felonies unless the defendant has prior convictions for murder, rape, certain sex offenses or certain gun crimes.” It also permitted resentencing “for those currently serving a prison sentence for any of the offenses that the initiative reduces to misdemeanors.” That measure did therefore lead to early releases.

The state passed a variety of other sentencing-reform measures beginning in 2010. For instance, California had long taken a tough-on-crime approach, including passage of the nation’s toughest “three strikes and you’re out” laws in 1994, in the midst of frighteningly high crime rates. But even that signature crime-fighting law was revised, as voters passed, 70 percent to 30 percent, a 2012 statewide initiative that required a life sentence only if the third strike were serious or violent.

The new laws reduced prison overcrowding, although they didn’t actually reduce the amount of tax dollars spent on the prison system. The big question: What have they done to crime rates? A spike in some crimes over that period has led to a vociferous debate, with Republicans and some moderate Democrats fanning fears of a crime wave. One Republican gubernatorial candidate, Abel Maldonado, ran for governor in 2014 on an anti-crime platform, but didn’t gain traction.

Currently, Democratic Assemblyman Jim Cooper, a former sheriff’s captain from Elk Grove, is leading efforts qualify a ballot measure for the 2018 general election that would roll back much of Proposition 47. It also would roll back the loosened parole requirements in Proposition 57, which passed on the 2016 statewide ballot, and expand the list of crimes that requires collection of the perpetrator’s DNA, according to an Associated Press report.

Such pushback is due in large part to fears of growing crime rates. “Since the passage of Proposition 47 by voters in 2014 and the signing of AB109 in 2011, violent crime has been on the rise in California, up 12 percent in 2015 statewide according to the FBI,” according to a statement in March by Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside County. Politifact double-checked his claim and found a one-year violent crime increase (from 2014 to 2015) of 8.4 percent.

That’s certainly enough to spark concern, but it’s hard to assess crime data based on short periods of time – and even harder to trace crime increases or decreases to any particular policy cause. New research from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice looked at the entire 2010-2016 period of criminal-justice policy reform and found some mixed results. Overall, however, the group explains that the state’s crime rate was “stable” over that time.

“Urban crime rates in California declined precipitously through the 1990s and 2000s,” wrote author Mike Males. “Since 2010, crime in California has stabilized, hovering near historically low levels.” Males compared the first six months of 2016 (the latest reporting period) with the first six months of 2010 and found that “total crime rates experienced no net change, while property crime declined by 1 percent and violent crime increased by 3 percent.”

National crime data show a small overall uptick nationwide, which might suggest that something other than California-only realignment and sentencing reform policies were at work here. Crime data often is affected more by local factors, and indeed the study finds that “crime rates at the local level have varied considerably.” For instance, crime rates shot up 18 percent in Downey, but dropped an astounding 29 percent in Santa Clara.

Regarding the big cities, the report found increased violent crime rates in Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Jose – but lower violent crime rates in Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. Likewise, some big cities (Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego) faced rising property crimes, but others (Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose) saw falling rates of property crime from 2010 to 2016.

The report found “no visible change” due to realignment and called for “more data” before “drawing conclusions about Prop. 47’s effect on crime.” Other studies from last year echo these conclusions. These numbers, based on the newest FBI statistics, suggest that current concerns about a justice-reform-driven crime wave are overblown.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

The 2017 session of the California Legislature may be remembered as when the criminal justice reform movement in America’s largest state lost its momentum.

The movement entered the session with a head of steam after winning majority support from the Legislature and then the public for Proposition 47 in 2014 and for Proposition 57 in 2016. The former measure reclassified dozens of “nonviolent” and “nonserious” offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. The latter made it easier for nonviolent felons to win parole.

This year, the same rationale that civil liberties groups, progressive think tanks and minority organizations offered for Propositions 47 and 57 was invoked in seeking sweeping statewide bail reform and a pilot program allowing drug addicts to inject themselves in safe settings in several cities and counties. That rationale: California’s criminal justice system is not only far too punitive, it focuses too much on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation.

State Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, led the push for putting sharp limits on the state’s money bail system in favor of a system that largely trusted suspects without serious criminal histories to not go on the lam. They argued that California’s highest-in-the-nation bail requirements were unnecessary to get the accused to show up for trial and had the effect of destroying lives of suspects by forcing them to spend months in jail, unable to post 10 percent of their bail and secure a guarantee from a bail bondsman.

The fact that more than half the people in state jails are there not because they had been convicted of crimes but because they can’t post bail resonated not just with those who saw bail laws as unfair but with those who saw the system as wildly expensive.

This prompted optimism from Hertzberg in an interview with the Los Angeles Times before the 2017 session began: “Now you have a whole host of groups on both sides of the aisle looking at the cost and fairness of the system,” he said.

But the high point for the reform push came on May 31, when Hertzberg’s SB10 passed the Senate 26-11. A day later, the Assembly rejected AB42, Bonta’s identical bill, on a 35-37 vote.

Supporters of the measures expressed frustration that the governor waited until late August to offer support – and then only with the proviso that the bills be taken up in 2018, not in the closing days of the 2017 session. But it’s an open question whether Brown could have muscled the measures to passage. While other local and state governments have reported success with bail reform, Maryland’s adoption of no-cash bail reform last year has won wide attention for its troubled start. The Washington Post reported in July that the number of trial no-shows had more than doubled under the new system.

No to ‘government-sanctioned drug dens’

The other proposed reform made similar halting progress before being put aside for possible reconsideration in 2018. AB186 by Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, would have established safe areas in a handful of cities and counties for drug users to inject themselves without fear of being charged with crimes, among several provisions. Drug law reformers argued that this would reduce the carnage from the opioid crisis by making it easier to treat overdoses and by getting addicts in touch with health care professionals. The program would lapse in 2022.

But law enforcement groups voiced sweeping objections to the law, saying it would create “government-sanctioned drug dens with no requirement that participants enter treatment,” in the words of a state Senate analysis, among many criticisms.

The bill passed the Assembly on June 1 with 21 votes – the bare minimum for approval – before being rejected by the Senate on Sept. 12 after gaining only 17 of the needed 21 votes.

Not only has it been a disappointing year for the lawmakers and civic leaders behind the recent push for sweeping reforms of California’s criminal justice system, their achievements are under harsh fire in Los Angeles County.

Last December, Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, and state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, proposed to largely scrap cash bail on the grounds that it wasn’t essential to getting people to show up for their trials, was destructive of individuals’ lives and would sharply reduce costs and crowding at county jails. But while one of the two related bills the lawmakers introduced passed the Senate on mostly party lines, the other stalled on the Assembly floor, only getting 35 votes in support. The bail bonds industry has strong relationships with both parties, especially in urban areas where bail bond agents are often significant donors.

On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye announced their support for the measure – but for review and passage in 2018, not the remaining few days of the current legislative session.

The support of Brown and Cantil-Sakauye was depicted as good news by Bonta and Hertzberg. But the governor’s and chief justice’s delay in getting on the bandwagon and the Assembly’s coolness to the concept showed that bail reform never enjoyed as much support as two other recent criminal justice reform measures. Adopted by state voters in 2014, Proposition 47 reclassifies several nonviolent crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies for those without criminal records involving crimes of violence or related to guns. Approved in 2016, Proposition 57 made it easier for those guilty of “nonviolent” crimes to win parole.

Reforms face intense blowback in L.A. County

Now, however, enthusiasm for these reforms has faded in the largest county in the state and nation.

In Los Angeles County, some law enforcement and women’s groups are upset with Proposition 57 over how many of the crimes it considers “nonviolent” involve considerable violence, including types of sexual assaults.

But many local leaders, politicians, law enforcement members and citizens are furious over the effects of Proposition 47. They say it amounts to a “get out of jail free” card for drug addicts who no longer face incarceration for their crimes but who face no punishment when they don’t honor requirements they meet with drug counselors. Anecdotes about addicts being arrested over and over and over without consequence have been common in police circles for more than two years. Similar stories abounded in a harsh October 2015 Washington Post analysis of the early effects of Proposition 47. It concluded the well-meaning state law kept addicts out of jail, but not out of trouble.

These concerns led Los Angeles County supervisors to vote 3-0 on Aug. 15 to set up a commission to examine “the challenges and opportunities” created by Propositions 47 and 57 and AB109, a 2011 state law that “realigned” criminal justice by having those convicted of many “low-level” crimes serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons.

The reforms have been the focus of anger over two gun murders on Feb. 20 in Los Angeles County, allegedly committed by convicted felon Michael C. Mejia – one of a family member, the other of Whittier police Officer Keith Boyer. Mejia had been released from state prison 10 months before the killings and the Los Angeles gang member reportedly committed several parole violations without being sent back to state prison before Feb. 20.

After the killings, Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper and the Los Angeles Police Protective League blamed AB109 and Proposition 47 for making it easier for Mejia to avoid being returned to state prison for breaking parole.

Reformers said Proposition 47 had nothing to do with Mejia’s treatment. They said that while AB109 changed how Mejia was treated after being released from prison, it did so by assigning responsibility for his oversight to the Los Angeles County Probation Department – not the state corrections department.

But the argument that the county was blaming state reforms for its own failings never took hold. The day after officer Boyer’s death, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said state reforms were “putting people back on the street that aren’t ready to be back on the street.” He said his jail system had so many dangerous inmates that it amounted to a “default state prison” – undermining claims that reforms would have positive or benign effects on local communities.

Fentanyl, an anesthetic said to cause a euphoric high 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin, caused around 30 overdoses in the Sacramento area alone in a seven-day period in March, about a third of which were fatal. In 2015, it killed 30 people in Orange County, and in 2014 it killed 62 people in Los Angeles County.

While the measure drew Democratic support in the Senate, one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, said concerns related to overcrowded prisons were too much. 

“It’s disappointing that the Assembly Appropriations Committee did not forward the bill to the entire Assembly for a vote,” Bates in a statement. “Unfortunately, (Gov. Jerry Brown’s) focus on decreasing the state’s prison population has made it difficult to pass any legislation that would address weaknesses in current criminal law.”

Voters approved a sentencing reform measure, Proposition 47, in 2014 and will consider another, supported by Brown, in November.

Bates’ bill would have targeted dealers of large quantities, adding sentence enhancements per weight, with a number of offenders thought to be relatively small. 

But Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and many other high-profile Democrats who sought the law continue to defend it. They hail it both for freeing up room in the Golden State’s long-overcrowded prisons and for moving away from a punitive criminal-justice status quo exemplified by both the state Legislature’s and state voters’ adoption of “three strikes and you’re out” measures in 1992 mandating that three-time convicts be locked up at least 25 years.

Now, however, Prop. 47 is coming under new criticism that can’t be blunted or turned away by talk of social justice. It has to do with a problem endemic to California’s direct democracy: Ballot measures are sold to voters with promises that often don’t come true.

In 2014, the measure’s advocates told Californians that savings from releasing state inmates would free up  “hundreds of millions of dollars annually, which would be spent on truancy prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services,” using language from a report by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. The claim was cited prominently in the official ballot argument for Prop. 47 and repeatedly in debates and interviews over the initiative.

Prop. 47’s savings a fraction of what was predicted

The California Department of Finance, however, says that never happened. Instead, in its official calculations for the 2016-17 budget, it predicted savings of just $29.3 million. Aware that the number would be a huge letdown to social service advocates, the governor and the Legislature arbitrarily inflated the amount to be granted to their programs in spring 2017 to $67.4 million.

But even with the boost, that’s a third of the low end of “hundreds of millions of dollars” that voters were told would go to help the needy.

The LAO doesn’t agree, issuing a report specifically challenging the $29.3 million figure. The document says the estimate is “about $100 million” low.

But in a recent Sacramento Bee story, the Brown administration said the LAO’s estimate depended upon a false assumption: that without Prop. 47, the state would have to pay to house more than 5,000 inmates in “contract beds” at expensive non-state facilities in California, Mississippi and Arizona.

Under Prop. 47, it is the Finance Department that makes the final call on how much money is judged to have been saved and is thus available for the social programs touted as benefiting from the ballot measure.

But this big picture doesn’t sit well with many lawmakers, starting with Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, and advocates for low-income residents.

State finding undercuts crime reformers’ credibility

The Brown administration’s position on Prop. 47’s savings has the potential to undercut the governor’s push for his own criminal-justice reform measure this November, Proposition 57, which would make it easier for “nonviolent” criminals in state prisons to gain parole.

The measure is already likely to be very controversial because the ballot language pushed by Jerry Brown and accepted by state Attorney General Kamala Harris classifies several categories of sexual attacks as nonviolent, as detailed on the website of the California District Attorneys Association. This includes the 2015 attack on an unconscious student by then-Stanford athlete Brock Turner, a case that has drawn national attention because of fury over the light sentence Turner was given.

Prop. 57’s path to adoption could be further complicated if its critics can point to Prop. 47’s unmet promises and say that in California, criminal justice reform advocates have a credibility problem. Disappointed social services advocates such as Aqeela Sherrills, an activist who lobbied for Prop. 47’s passage, are likely to help make the case.

“We pass an important ballot initiative, we change the law and we change the game to reallocate the resources,” Sherrills told the Bee. “Then they start playing with our money again. I don’t understand. I was like, ‘Man, no.’”

• Women stand to make only modest gains in Legislature in November
• Gavin Newsom has habit of plagiarism
• Housing solution: Building units in back yards?
• Local governments to further restrict new development
• “Where did California’s savings from reducing drug penalties go?” 

Good morning! Welcome to Tuesday. 

Women make up more than half of California’s population, but only about one-fourth of the Legislature. 

And in November, that’s unlikely to change too much, according to a CalWatchdog analysis.

While an October surprise, outside factor or just particularly good or bad campaigning could change the course of race that appears to be a sure thing, primary results, incumbency advantages, voting trends and partisan makeup of a district can be useful in making educated guesses.

Currently, out of 120 legislative seats, there are 30 held by women — an additional seat is vacant now, having been held by the late Republican Senator Sharon Runner, who died unexpectedly earlier this month.   

There could be as many as 49 women in the Legislature next year, but it is likely that they’ll hover around the same amount as this year.

CalWatchdog has more.  

In other news:

• Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom “has a pattern of posting other people’s work without credit,” reports The Sacramento Bee. 
• To ease the housing crisis, legislators are considering easing restrictions on homeowners building small units in backyards. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• And yet, as state lawmakers consider many ideas for increasing affordable housing, local governments are considering proposals to restrict new development. The Voice of San Diego has more.
• “Proposition 47, which passed in 2014, reduced drug possession and some crimes of petty theft, check forgery and receiving stolen property from felonies to misdemeanors. The initiative mandated that savings from downgrading these offenses be spent on mental health and substance abuse treatment, victim services and truancy prevention. Voters were told the shift in emphasis from prison to rehabilitation could result in savings in ‘the low hundreds of millions.’ Yet the final savings figure to pay for prevention and treatment – reached after months of tense disagreements and accusations of betrayal – is far below the original estimate.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til August.

Gov. Brown:

• Attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @MahaYoga_LA

The first of the policies was Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2011 decision to “realign” the corrections system and shift 30,000 prisoners from state institutions to county jails. With many county facilities as overcrowded as state prisons, this led to an estimated release of 18,000 people who were incarcerated in California. The second was state voters’ 2014 approval of Proposition 47, which reclassified some drug and property crime offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, which also led to more convicted criminals avoiding getting locked up. It was strongly supported by the governor.

What’s been the effect? That is a crucial question, given that California’s violent crime rate jumped significantly in the first half of 2015. In California’s 68 cities with populations of 100,000 or more, violent crime increased by 11 percent, according to statistics compiled by the FBI.

This suggests that “realignment” and Prop. 47 might have a cumulative effect. A December 2013 report by the Public Policy Institute of California downplayed any link between a smaller increase in violent crime in 2011 and 2012 and the effects of “realignment”:

We find that California’s crime rates increased between 2011 and 2012 — violent crime went up 3.4 percent and property crime went up 7.6 percent. These rates vary widely across the state, with California’s 10 largest counties generally seeing greater increases in crime than in the state overall. However, despite this pattern of increase, crime rates remain at historically low levels in California today.

 

How does realignment relate to the recent uptick in crime? Our analysis of violent crime finds no evidence that realignment has had an effect on the most serious offenses, murder and rape. The evidence on robbery is more uncertain, with a possible indication of a modest increase related to realignment. California’s overall increases in violent crime between 2011 and 2012 appear to be part of a broader upward trend also experienced in other states.

Did reducing felonies help ‘the crooks win’?

Now, 17 months after Proposition 47’s adoption, opinions are beginning to harden on its effects.

In November, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell depicted the initiative as a well-intentioned failure. And on PoliceOne.com, a website on police issues, a December opinion piece declared “the crooks won.”

Inmates are fans of Prop. 47 because it keeps them out of jail, allowing them to keep using illegal drugs and keep committing crime. Even if they miss their court date (which in turn gives them a warrant), inmates know the crimes and the misdemeanor warrants will not keep them locked up long. Inmates view misdemeanors as “not a big deal” and shrug their shoulders. It does not matter that there are hardworking citizens who are being victimized. Criminals usually never show remorse or empathy for their victims. Criminals have a great way of decriminalizing and minimizing their crimes. With Prop. 47, the state and the criminals both are doing just that.

But William Lansdowne, a veteran California police chief, strongly challenges this assessment in an op-ed posted Thursday by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Since Prop. 47 passed, critics have tried to scapegoat it for a rise in crime, but there’s no evidence proving such an assertion. As the former police chief for San Diego, San Jose and Richmond, I know all too well that every shift in crime must be addressed. There is nothing more important than public safety. But in paying close attention, we need to be honest about the facts and avoid misleading the public.

‘The studies are not done and the results aren’t in’

Others suggest that both McDonnell and Lansdown are too quick to draw conclusions:

Keramet Reiter, a criminology professor at UC Irvine, said the ballot measure has been used by critics as a “convenient scapegoat” for the rise in crime. The reality, she said, is more complicated in a state that is undergoing broad changes to its criminal justice system, including a massive shift of inmates from state prisons to local jails.

 

The Los Angeles Police Department has reported a double-digit increase in property crime so far this year, but Chief Charlie Beck said it is premature to fault Proposition 47.

 

“The studies are not done and the results aren’t in,” Beck said.

That is from a November Los Angeles Times report.

The rise of Big Data has led to many changes in policing strategies in recent years, most notably in New York City, where the NYPD uses algorithms to predict likely trouble spots. But big-think arguments over why crime has gone down sharply over the last 25 year have actually gotten more complex, not less. Last year, Vox detailed 16 different theories explaining the phenomenon.