Stanford Report Looks at Prop 47 Data, LA Sheriff Records Videos About Prop 47, SF Has a New Sheriff…and More

A STANFORD REPORT SAYS THERE’S NOT A CONNECTION BETWEEN PROP. 47 AND CRIME SPIKES

California’s release of thousands of prisoners through 2014’s Proposition 47 has not led to an increase in crime, according to a controversial Stanford report released this week.

In the year since the implementation of Prop. 47, which reduced six low-level felonies to misdemeanors, only 5% of the nearly 4,500 released early from jails and prisons have returned to lock-up. Pre-Prop. 47, 42% of state inmates went back to prison within a year of their release. It’s still too soon to calculate the full impact of the proposition on crime rates. And while the recidivism data recorded by the state prior to Prop. 47 is limited, the Stanford study suggests that the unusually low recidivism rate among Prop. 47ers indicates that higher crime rates in California should not be attributed to the 2014 law.

Since last November, there are 13,000 fewer inmates in CA prisons and jails. That number is significant because it means that fewer inmates have to be released early due to overcrowding. The study found that because of Prop. 47, counties reduced those early releases by 35%.

Stanford researchers estimated the state and counties will save a combined $300 million annually, from which $150 million will be earmarked for mental health and substance abuse treatment, efforts to reduce truancy in public schools, and services for crime victims.

In an interview on the blog, Stanford Lawyer , the report’s author, Justice Advocacy Project’s director, Michael Romano, discusses his findings, the ways he says Prop. 47 has been successful, as well as criticism of the law. Here are some clips:

News about rising crime rates has been getting a lot of attention lately. Is that the case in California—is crime going up here?

Romano: LA is reporting a rise in crime; other counties are reporting a decrease in crime. But there’s no state-wide crime data available yet. There is no evidence connecting Proposition 47 with crime rates. However, as I said, the data really isn’t in yet.

Where is that coming from?

Romano: I think the LA police department, which is obviously the biggest and most important in the state. I don’t doubt that their data is correct, but data provided by other counties and other police departments shows that crime in those counties is going down. Now, how each county reports crime and what they each consider to be property crime, versus violent crime, it’s all different, county to county, so it’s very difficult to say apples to apples.

Is there a correlation between a rise in crime, if there really is one, and Proposition 47?

Romano: There is no evidence that there’s a correlation. The correlation that is suggested by some law enforcement officials, frankly, does not square with the available data and, certainly, the data that has been released by state agencies—including the Department of Corrections, which indicates that those who’ve been released early under Proposition 47 are not responsible for the crimes being reported.

There have been several op-eds in the LA Times about Proposition 47, some critical of it. Marc Debbaudt, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, said in one that criminal history is no longer taken into account for sentencing since passage of Proposition 47, even a history of serious crime, such as armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, which is contrary to what I’ve read about Proposition 47. Is he just wrong about that?

Romano: No. He’s right in that if you were convicted of an assault in the past and sentenced and served your time and then released, you start with a clean slate. If you commit a drug crime, then you are sentenced for that new drug crime. The punishment for that new crime has reduced from a presumptive sentence of 18 months to a presumptive sentence of one year.

[SNIP]

Romano: There has been a lot of misinformation spread about Proposition 47 and I hope that this report helps paint a realistic picture based on real data.

The initiative was supported by key law enforcement individuals including San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and William Lansdowne, former San Diego police chief. And Derek Byers, President of the California Public Defender’s Association, has voiced optimism about the data highlighted in your report.

Romano: Overwhelmingly, the people who have spoken up against Proposition 47 are folks in law enforcement who opposed it in the first place, who are now apparently seeing some rise in crime in their jurisdiction and, rather than looking to their own policies or other outside trends, are blaming concerns about public safety on Proposition 47, without any empirical data to support those claims.

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LA COUNTY SHERIFF JIM MCDONNELL ON WHAT HE THINKS IS MISSING FROM PROP. 47, WHICH HE CALLS “WELL INTENTIONED”…PLUS TWO MORE TIMES EDITORIALS

Continuing the LA Times’ editorial series on Prop. 47, LA County Sheriff Jim McDonnell recorded a series of videos of his take on Prop. 47 and its effects a year after its implementation. Sheriff McDonnell says that the law has removed consequences beyond citations for certain offenses, and has made Californians less safe than they were a year ago.

For a successful Prop. 47, Sheriff McDonnell says, “we should have front-loaded the treatment portion with funding from the state.” Because substance abuse and mental health diversion courts were set up to serve people facing felonies with longer sentences, participation in these alternative courts is down 60% in Los Angeles. (In a separate op-ed for the Times, Superior Court Judge Stephen V. Manley, who founded Santa Clara County’s mental health and drug courts, said that for the courts to survive, they can and must evolve.)

McDonnell discusses the department’s use of risk assessment and triage with regard to jail overcrowding and which offenders stay locked up and which are released early. The sheriff also says he believes that a climate of mistrust and scrutiny of law enforcement across the nation may be responsible for rising crime, by making officers afraid to be proactive.

Go watch the sheriff’s video messages.

The Times had two more recent additions to the Prop. 47 series.

As the nation turns its attention to the 6,000 federal prisoners granted early release, a Times editorial says the most crucial thing for those 6,000 and the thousands released from California’s prisons and jails is reentry: substance abuse and mental health services, housing, employment and other services that are often underdeveloped and underfunded.

The editorial makes the case that while official Prop. 47 funds will not be available to use for reentry services until next year, there’s still untapped savings (from the reduction in felony prosecutions) that the state and local municipalities could put to work right now to beef up support for people exiting lock-up. Here’s a clip:

Prisoners come home every day. About 9,000 California inmates completed their sentences and returned home each month during the worst of the state’s prison crowding crisis. Their prospects for staying on the straight-and-narrow were not great because in-prison treatment and rehabilitation programs were too few to meet the need, and because the prisons were (according to federal judges) “criminogenic” — meaning the environment made it more likely that inmates who returned to their neighborhoods would return to crime. Yet as large numbers left prison, crime rates kept falling. Offenders were reabsorbed into society in fairly large numbers without touching off crime waves.

Those releases, however, have been accompanied by increases in the number of people living in misery on the streets who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to see the connection. The problem of draconian punishments for nonviolent acts such as drug possession is being addressed in large part by the resentencing and release of prisoners. But prisoners coming home without drug or mental health treatment, without jobs, without housing and without reentry counseling and support — this is a different problem and is a long way from resolution. When inmates were being released at a steady pace of 9,000 or 10,000 a month, society’s failure to offer assistance could be conveniently ignored. That will be harder to do as sentences are shortened and the number of prisoners coming home becomes larger.

In a third entry in the Times series, the editorial board urges legislators to eliminate the three-year deadline for people with old felony convictions to take advantage of Prop. 47, in part because so many of those eligible are still unaware of the opportunity. Here’s a clip:

…old felony records still keep most of those people from fully taking their places in society, even if they have lived crime-free for decades.

Should that matter to the rest of us? It should. It’s a basic American value that people who have done their time ought to be able to return to society with their rights and opportunities restored, especially when the crime in question was neither violent nor serious. The crimes are still crimes, and the rap sheets won’t disappear, but the records should be updated to reflect the fact that the offenses are now misdemeanors, not felonies.

Many people with felony records remain legally marginalized, unable to get good-paying jobs, inadmissible to many schools and virtually ineligible to care for foster children or even their own kids. All told, according to some studies, they are burdened by more than 4,000 restrictions that don’t apply to people with only misdemeanor records. It’s in the interest of all Californians to ensure that as many former offenders as possible can transition from incarceration to responsible positions in society as parents, breadwinners and members of their communities.

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SAN FRANCISCO GETS ITS FIRST FEMALE SHERIFF – SHE WANTS TO REKINDLE THE DEPARTMENT’S RELATIONSHIP WITH FEDERAL IMMIGRATION

Ross Mirkarimi lost his re-election bid for San Francisco Sheriff on Tuesday to Vicki Hennessy.

Hennessy, who won by a landslide, says she wants to repair the department’s relations with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, choosing on a “case by case” basis” when to notify ICE that an undocumented inmate is about to be released.

The new sheriff’s stance does not seem to fully line up with San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” status, which the SF Supervisors reaffirmed in October, despite criticism, after an undocumented man, whom ICE had wanted for deportation, shot and killed a woman on the pier.

Hennessy says she will also take a serious look at Mirkarimi’s recent decision to house transgender inmates according to their gender identities.

The NY Times’ Laura Holson has the story. Here’s a clip:

Ms. Hennessy will succeed Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whose four-year term was marked by personal scandals, confrontations with Mayor Edwin M. Lee, and — perhaps most dramatically — the release of an illegal immigrant in his jail who had several felonies.

The felon he released, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, had been deported to Mexico five times and, after winning freedom here, proceeded to shoot a tourist named Kathryn Steinle to death on a pier on the Embarcadero waterfront. The issue prompted San Francisco to re-examine — and reaffirm — its commitment to being a sanctuary city, one that shields immigrants from deportation.

Ms. Hennessy, who was backed by the mayor, said she would take a more inclusive approach in working with federal immigration officials, reviewing on a “case-by-case basis” whether to notify them when an unauthorized immigrant with a criminal record was due for release.

Ms. Hennessy said she did not have a political agenda but wanted to bring a sense of calm back to the Sheriff’s Department; many of Mr. Mirkarimi’s deputies had campaigned for her and against him. She takes office in January.

“I was an executive and manager for 25 years,” she said. “We are going to agree to disagree, but we will get things done together.”