Can We Downsize Our Prisons and Jails Without Compromising Public Safety?

Abstract

Research Summary Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's (Prop 47's) impact on California's crime rates. With a state‐level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California's crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted. Our findings suggest that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, or burglary. Larceny and motor vehicle thefts, however, seem to have increased moderately after Prop 47, but these results were both sensitive to alternative specifications of our synthetic control group and small enough that placebo testing cannot rule out spuriousness. Policy Implications As the United States engages in renewed debates regarding the scale and cost of its incarcerated population, California stands at the forefront of criminal justice reform. Although California reduced its prison population by 13,000 through Prop 47, critics argue anecdotally that the measure is responsible for recent crime upticks across the state. We find little empirical support for these claims. Thus, our findings suggest that California can downsize its prisons and jails without compromising public safety.

Reducing the Rate of U.S. Incarceration One State at a Time

“…Grattet and Bird () echo the limitation of the Prop 47 analysis recognized by Bartos and Kubrin (). At this point, we can only observe the effect of Prop 47 one year after its implementation.…”

“…One such laboratory for studying this fundamental question is the state of California. Bradley Bartos and Charis Kubrin (, this issue) have capitalized on the implementation of California Proposition 47 (Prop 47, 2014), which enacted material changes to sentencing for some drug and property offenses diverting offenders from prison and jail. Although it is easier to document how many prison beds and the amount of money this may save, it is methodologically harder to evaluate the effect on crime.…”

“…The Abadie et al. () references can be found in the Bartos and Kubrin () article. There is a suite of applications written in MATLAB, Stata, and R implementing synthetic controls accessible to any analyst who may want to use the method.…”

“…Bartos and Kubrin () find that in the year after the implementation of Prop 47, California had no appreciable increase in the rate of seven index crimes relative to the synthetic controls. As these scholars show, California has been the epicenter of federal judicial intervention and statutory changes to reduce its prison population.…”

“…None of them have any implication for general deterrence—the effect of punishment on the public at large. The strength of the Bartos and Kubrin () study is that by using a synthetic control design, the authors examine levels of crime in the state pre‐ and post‐implementation of Prop 47. Their evaluation is a simultaneous test of incapacitation, specific, and general deterrence.…”