Study Finds Lingering Spike In Car Theft After California Prison Change

Our top story on Midday Edition, and recent years of one he has been forced to take some drastic steps to go down its prison population. Panel federal judges found that the states overcrowded prisons created conditions that violate the Constitution so four years ago the state began the realignment program. Many nonviolent nonsexual, nonserious offenders were sentenced to county jails instead of state prisons. Last November voters approved prop 47 which downgraded many nonserious, nonviolent drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. At the time in a law-enforcement officials predicted the changes would spark an increase in crime and local communities. Now the public policy Institute of California is out with a study on realignment and its impact on crime. Joining meis Steven Roth fail, co-author of the public policy of California crime report. Stephen, welcome. ________________________________________ Thank you for having me. ________________________________________ Stephen has realignment had an impact on crime in California? ________________________________________ What we have seen this is the second of two studies that we've done realignment went into effect in late 2011 and led to a pretty sharp decline in the prison population and I'm not entirely offsetting increase in local jails populations with about 18,000 or 20,000 people that are currently -- not is as a society that otherwise would have been. What we have seen with the two years -- that are available is that there's continue to be a decline in violent crime in California contingent on the trend that existed. That the decline matches other states that have similar trends so in terms of violent crimes there hasn't been any impact whatsoever. We do however see you a relatively small uptick in motor vehicle theft and its relatively modest on a per capita basis, but it is there a bit stubborn and it is a difference that opened up in California relative to other states. ________________________________________ Is this first of all, the public policy Institute is not drawing any kind of cause and effect between the crime rates going down and realignment, is that right? ________________________________________ We are not -- theoretically what people would expect is if you are released people that are currently active from prison that it would actually increases and the question is how much or perhaps if there's an impact at all. So we do think that what we've been able to do is to at least set up a test that would allow us to infer if there wasn't an increase of we do things like compare counties that have more people realized relative to counties that didn't and we also look at what happened to California relative to other states and we feel pretty comfortable saying that realignment did not lead to an increase in violent crime. It is a causal statements were to speak. ________________________________________ The point I'm getting at Stephen is alignment didn't have any effect on the crime rates going down and you don't know if it had any and obviously didn't cause the crime rate go up, right? So the impact is negligible at this point? ________________________________________ The impact is negligible at this point. ________________________________________ Do we know if indeed he has any affect on those pricing are theft numbers? ________________________________________ The car theft numbers look pretty clear so the timing of the increase coincides with reduction in the prison population. Those counties that had larger reductions in the number the residence incarcerated -- ledger increases -- auto that relative to others so the impact on auto theft does appear to be realignment driven. That being said, that impact is small relative to what we observed in other prison releases at other times so for example when the incarceration was much lower and the United States or prison leases that have occurred in other countries with Carson rate is much lower. So that's -- we are arguing or at least we believe that relative to the research that exist what we observe in California is a small impact on property crime. ________________________________________ Steven Roth fail, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. ________________________________________ Thank you for having me. ________________________________________ Joining me in studio Arment tickets, send Tenniel County chief probation officer to welcome back. ________________________________________ Let me back, thank you crabmeat. ________________________________________ -- rituals all of the, thank you for coming in, Rachel. ________________________________________ Thank you for having me. ________________________________________ Mack when realignment started four years goal of the verdict came down on your probation office can you remind us why that was? ________________________________________ Because what realignment did it wasn't just a release of prisoners it was a transfer of responsibility. So individuals that since he went to prison for what I would say our non-strike felonies prior to realignment would have come out of prison under the supervision of the state parole agent and now those individuals are my response really, my department responsible it is so that's why there was such a significant impact. Similarly, the same non-strike balance were sentenced locally prior to realignment with onto a state prison now state in which the local jail. Andif their local prison sentence as it is called was what we call split many that they would serve a portion of it in custody and then the second portion in the community, those also became a probationary spots ability. ________________________________________ I understand so what is your take on these findings now from the public policy of California? Basically from what our previous guest said, the effect of realignment so far has been found to be negligible on crime rates except perhaps for car theft spin I can tell you I believe here in San Diego we had a little bit of a preview of the findings because of the work of our local group send out that by Dr. Cindy Burke. We have seen the report that preceded frankly the public policy report and dental -- showed us a couple things. One, significant drop -- the drop in property crime. And a very small impact on violent crime so that was one of the measures that we collectively looked at here in San Diego County that affirmed for us that the goals that we have set with regard to work collaboratively with large to be met those goals were to keep the public safe and to try and improve outcomes for the realignment population that have been shifted to us locally. ________________________________________ Rachel, remember there was a great deal of concern law-enforcement that when realignment was of implemented that crime rates would go up. What do you think stop that from happening? ________________________________________ I think there's a few things to consider. First going back to what our first guest talked about about the concern that when people were released from prison due to realignment that crime would go up. It is a myth that realignment release people from prison. And chief Jenkins touched on this when he said it was a shift of responsibility so we limited and change the length of prison sentences. He changed where these offenders are being housed and who supervising them and it shifted a lot of number two supervising these offenders to probation. Ithink would've the things to highlight and one of the huge factors in our success here in San Diego especially is that as a group we brought all of the criminal justice partners together through the leadership of chief Jenkins, Modbus body to menace of the Sheriff Bill Corr in we've got all these groups together to figure out him and him -- into the community and a safe manner. That's where a lot of the resources have gone to pick we worked in a very collaborative action with the courts, with the Public defenders office, with probation, the District attorneys office, the Sheriff's Department to do our best to keep communities the community safe despite these changes. ________________________________________ Even though there wasn't this mass release as you say of prisoners from the state prisons to the county jails, or even out to the public, my tip alignment -- the apparent success of this so far, might mean that a lot of people serving time for nonviolent crimes in state prison he really didn't need to be there? ________________________________________ Who might have been helped better and the community with these programs that are now up and running? ________________________________________ I think that's an argument to be considered, but like I said I think it is also important to remember that they are still serving sentences. They are still serving a sentence with for the same length that they would have served in state prison. Lover they are serving at locally and even those offenders that were going to stay prison when they were being released onto Pearl never coming back into our communities anyway. So now we've developed programs through probation and to the Sheriff's Department to help ease that transition so I think that's a fair argument to be made, I don't think you can draw that conclusion across the board. ________________________________________ Got you. Mack, what county policies do you think that most effective in keeping offenders from reoffending? ________________________________________ I think we can point to four specific able locations here is that you can do that have led to our successes so far. The first one Rachel alluded to in my department we created an entire division devoted to managing this population in the community and we committed more than half of the money that came to the probation department directly into treatment services. Certainly Sheriff or that the creation of a reentry center so those local felons who were sentenced locally and receive treatment and intervention services before they come into the community. And the court created a mandatory supervision court that is capitalizes on a very successful the very successful drug court but also that the local felons who are returning to supervision receive services, reentry services before they come into play and those are three. ________________________________________ I will give you a minute to think of the fourth because what I would like to do is ask you Rachel, do you still have any concerns about how to the realignment policy is working here? ________________________________________ I think that it is a little bit early to see. I think that's proper 47 also changed the game a lot. We had a good handle on realignment in dealing with these offenders and that we have proper 47 cross which is actually taken some of those offenders and we were working with out of that realignment population. So I think it will take if years for us to actually see what the true effects of both realignment and proposition 47 will be. ________________________________________ Mack, do before? Then our remember had a San Diego innovation which was really the idea of [Indiscernible] every collaborative work together to create a community transition center. What's unique about that is all of these individuals that ended up leaving prison prior to the advent of our community transition center they would leave prison and get $20 at what's called Gates money. They are told to show up somewhere to begin supervision. With art CETC we actually go and pick everyone of the individuals up, bring them into the CTC, provide for the temporary benefit need one and take to -- through an assessment process to look at their health needs, the substance abuse needs, mental health needs so they leave that facility with the case plan and sometimes we would deliver them derogatory residential treatment Center. ________________________________________ I'm glad you remember that one. Thank you. Rachel, let's move to prop 47 for a moment or two if we can which is not covered by this public policy report as you pointed out. Remind us exactly what this new law does? ________________________________________ Prop 47 was passed by the voters in November of last year and what he did was it took certain drug offenses and -- defenses and made them a misdemeanor for all purposes. Meaning across the board. But prior to that if you had a certain number of petty theft convictions, for example, you would then elevate to a felony at a certain point. Now petty theft is always going to be a misdemeanor select those crimes up to felony treatment so that there they are always going to be misdemeanor. ________________________________________ And it allowed prisoner, stay prison swore in jail, in prison for felonies to perhaps have their convictions reassessed under the guidelines of this new law. Have you received a lot of petitions? ________________________________________ Yes. Proposition 47 was not a lot that but just was looking forward. It goes back to pass convictions as well. We have received in the courts so far have received 32,000 petitions for consideration under proposition 47. So far we've addressed over 5000 of those in the district attorneys office with the courts so we still have a long ways to go. A large number of those have been from state prison. We have the district attorneys office come very close to completing all of the cases for the people who are in cars -- in custody, we prioritized them so -- so that if they shouldn't be in custody anymore we take care of that and we release them. We have been working with the public defender's office and while there are some that have probably fall into the cracks at this point that we are working to catch, we have identified and processed nearly all of the people who are in either local prisoner or stay prison. ________________________________________ As I understand about 2500 of those applications in San Diego have been resentenced at this time. Mack is and they are concerned that a lot of people who were serving time for felonies and have their sentence get resentenced on under a misdemeanor are out of prison. Not going to probation, that would have to go into poll, they don't have to go into anything. ________________________________________ Yes, there is a concern. The court when it evaluates the petition has the option to impose your parole or can place and actually on summary projection. The point is that there may no longer be monitored and what's concerning about that is that many times justice involvement for individuals with substance abuse type problems, leverage of probation supervision for one is what keeps them engaged in ineffective treatment program so we are particularly concerned that at some of these individuals take advantage of the sensitivity action that they are eligible under prop 40 pop 47, we are concerned as to whether or not that they will stay engaged in the treatment program because just the fact that they had a sentence reduced from felony to this -- misdemeanor -- or that they were complete. So what wedo know largely in terms of drug addicts across the board, only three out of 10 on their own successfully complete substance abuse treatment. So well there's a lot, there's a lot of eyes on Prop 47 couple of people and community are quite excited about prop 47 be passed and a good thing in the sense maybe not every felon really needs to be in prison to the next pieces we have put in place are making sure that the savings are really captured and put back into a drug treatment program and that people go and stay. ________________________________________ Okay, I have two and a difficult to thank you both very much to go I've been speaking with Matt Jacobs, provision officer and a San Diego Deputy District Attorney, Rachel Solov. Thank you so much. ________________________________________ Thank you. ________________________________________ Thank you. ________________________________________