The Los Angeles Occasions, California’s largest newspaper, has editorialized in opposition to Proposition 36the Nov. 5 poll measure that might enhance penalties for some crimes.
Prop. 36 would modify Proposition 47the 2014 measure that decreased punishment for drug possession and different non-violent offenses. The modifications are wanted, invoice advocates say, to stem an uptick in such crimes.
“Backers of Proposition 36 would have you believe that California’s criminal laws attract thieves and that public safety is not possible without long prison sentences for people holding illegal drugs for their personal use,” the Occasions editorial declares. “They provide a poll measure that might rescind voters’ sensible reforms, partially refill prisons and revive the disastrous conflict on medicine.
“They claim their solution will ramp up drug treatment and combat homelessness, when it is at least as likely to do the opposite. It would suck up much of the funding Californians recently approved for mental health care and gut programs that have successfully slashed recidivism and brought much-needed trauma recovery services to crime victims.”
Setting apart all different points of Prop. 36 and the arguments for and in opposition to its passage, the Occasions’ protection of “programs that have successfully slashed recidivism” deserves a deeper examination.
The editorial particularly refers to a report that the state’s Board of State and Neighborhood Corrections issued in February about outcomes of post-Prop. 47 packages that direct financial savings from lowered jail prices into counseling and different providers to stop felons launched or diverted from jail from returning to crime.
In 2015, a yr after Prop. 47’s passage, the Legislature enacted Meeting Invoice 1056which formalized the “Second Chance Program” of grants to companies to supply anti-recidivism providers.
One sentence in that invoice, which was not talked about in its abstract or within the data given to legislators on the time, did one thing else. It outlined, or redefined, recidivism as “a conviction of a new felony or misdemeanor committed within three years of release from custody or committed within three years of placement on supervision for a previous criminal conviction.”
The invoice codified a definition that the corrections board had adopted in 2014 to supersede all different definitions being utilized by varied arms of the felony justice system, not just for statistical functions however to find out how particular person inmates or parolees can be handled.
Previous to Prop. 47, parole brokers may ship felons again to jail for violating the phrases of their paroles, in addition to for being arrested for brand spanking new offenses.
The brand new and official definition of recidivism, requiring conviction of a brand new crime, was the least onerous of the choices thought-about by the corrections board. As soon as positioned in legislation, the definition, by eliminating arrests and parole violations, instantly decreased the statistical incidence of recidivism.
The report back to which the Occasions editorial refers claims that offenders who obtained counseling and different providers from the Second Probability Program had a recidivism price of simply 15.3%.
That’s lower than half the speed of offenders not in this system. Nonetheless, the report acknowledges that its recidivism price is predicated on a pattern of enrollees and solely counts convictions in the course of the period of the grant program, not three years following. It additionally doesn’t observe convictions in jurisdictions aside from the house county of every program.
In short, the watered down recidivism definition adopted by the corrections board and later the Legislature — convictions inside three years after launch — is diluted even additional within the report that the Occasions editorial cites as proof of success.
Thus, we actually don’t have any exhausting proof that Prop. 47’s substitution of counseling and different providers for time behind bars has actually decreased recidivism, or if it has merely put extra criminals on the road to commit extra crimes.
