A Turning Point in Mass Incarceration? Local Imprisonment Trajectories and Decarceration under California’s Realignment

Abstract

Mass incarceration is commonly understood as a sweeping national policy development, which has obscured remarkable local variation at the policy implementation stage. California’s “Realignment” (Assembly Bill [AB] 109; 2011) is a reform that exploits this variation by design. Research consistently finds that, net of crime, demographic, political, and system capacity characteristics explain the variation in incarceration across local jurisdictions. Do these characteristics also explain decarceration? This study uses group-based trajectory modeling and logistic regression to examine the association of such characteristics with California county trajectories of state prison use in the decade preceding Realignment. County imprisonment trajectories and their related characteristics are then assessed as explanations for decarceration under AB 109. Distinct “risk” factors for high and/or increasing imprisonment trajectories are identified, as well as apparent protective factors. A clear association was found between previous trajectories and decarceration, but county-level characteristics did not demonstrate the predicted effects. Results indicate that decarceration cannot be explained as merely the mirror image of incarceration and should be examined as a distinct phenomenon. Implications for future research and policymaking are discussed.

Were California’s Decarceration Efforts Smart? A Quasi-Experimental Examination of Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities

“…First, although our sensitivity analyses that disaggregated effects separately for prison and jail incarceration rates suggest that our findings were unlikely to be driven by double-counting people who were incarcerated, it remains possible that double-counting had some impact on the results. Second, because our study focuses exclusively on state-level incarceration, it does not provide insight into the different way these reforms were implemented across California counties (Verma, 2015, 2016); Third, with respect to the analyses exploring the impact of California’s reforms on racial and gender disparities, our study did not allow us to determine the extent to which the increase in disparities was driven by bias or by variation in the types of crimes for which people in different groups were charged with. Finally, our results did not allow us to determine how these reforms influenced disparities experienced by Asian and Native Americans, nor did they allow us to examine intersectional effects by gender and race.…”

“…Below we focus solely on describing the components of each of the five reforms. For more information on the history of the forces that caused these reforms to come about, please see Ball (2011), Schlanger (2013), Verma (2015), and Verma (2016).…”

“…It is important to note that research suggests that there has been substantial intercounty variation in how California’s reforms have been implemented (Verma, 2015, 2016). While some counties experienced large decreases in incarceration in response to reforms, others experienced smaller declines, and some even experienced increases (Lofstrom & Raphael, 2016; Verma, 2016). Moreover, factors that predicted high incarceration rates prior to California’s realignment did not necessarily have similar impacts on decarceration.…”

“…Moreover, factors that predicted high incarceration rates prior to California’s realignment did not necessarily have similar impacts on decarceration. For instance, Verma (2016) found that counties with large Black populations tended to have much higher imprisonment rates prior to California’s realignment, but only were significantly less likely to decarcerate when prior incarceration trajectories were accounted for. While understanding this intercounty variation is both interesting and important, the focus of this article is on the impact of the reforms in the aggregate, which can only be captured by focusing on state-level incarceration rates.…”

The Strategies, Complexities, and Realities of Zero Prison Population Growth

“…Most credit this to the 2011 realignment legislation, which diverts a large class of lower-level nonviolent offenders and parole violators to county jails, rather than state correctional facilities. While this helps lower the prison population, it potentially shifts additional burdens to the jail systems in terms of financial costs and overcrowding in jails (Kubrin and Seron 2016;Verma 2016).…”