Abstract: Severe overcrowding in California state prisons has led the Supreme Court to rule that California must reduce its state prison population drastically within the next several years. The State’s response, AB 109 (referred to as Realignment), which went into effect in late 2011, makes fundamental changes to California’s correctional system, most notably realigning from state to local jurisdictions certain responsibilities for lower-level nonviolent offenders and parolees. Specifically, AB 109 allows non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders to serve their sentence in county jails instead of state prisons. One effect of this policy is that counties can no longer send their offenders to state prisons but have to deal with them “locally” in county jails. No one knows what the effects of this dramatic policy shift are or will be, yet opinions about how local crime rates will increase (or decrease) post-realignment are pervasive. This project examines the impact of California’s realignment policy on neighborhood crime rates in the Southern California Region. We are currently collecting data that will allow us study crime in these neighborhoods pre- and post-realignment, and to determine how crime trajectories in neighborhoods change months and years following the policy’s implementation.
Realignment in California and the Consequences for Neighborhood Crime Rates
Abstract: Severe overcrowding in California state prisons has led the Supreme Court to rule that California must reduce its state prison population drastically within the next several years. The State’s response, AB 109 (referred to as Realignment), which went into effect in late 2011, makes fundamental changes to California’s correctional system, most notably realigning from state to local jurisdictions certain responsibilities for lower-level nonviolent offenders and parolees. Specifically, AB 109 allows non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders to serve their sentence in county jails instead of state prisons. One effect of this policy is that counties can no longer send their offenders to state prisons but have to deal with them “locally” in county jails. No one knows what the effects of this dramatic policy shift are or will be, yet opinions about how local crime rates will increase (or decrease) post-realignment are pervasive. This project examines the impact of California’s realignment policy on neighborhood crime rates in the Southern California Region. We are currently collecting data that will allow us study crime in these neighborhoods pre- and post-realignment, and to determine how crime trajectories in neighborhoods change months and years following the policy’s implementation.