Criminal Decarceration Policies and the Effect on Community Safety
This paper examines the effect of re-sentencing policies as a means of decarceration on community well- being. In 2011 and 2014, California passed jail decarceration policies, AB 109 and Prop 47, respectively. AB 109 reallocated state prison inmates into local county jails. On the other hand, Prop 47 reduced penalties for non-serious property crimes, thereby providing a second chance to offenders that committed specific non-violent crimes while lowering the burden on county jails by shifting offenders into local communities. My results indicate that Prop 47 increased the homeless population without reducing governmental spending on corrections, accompanied by weakly increasing trends of various governmental expenditures. Furthermore, California jail disposition data show heterogeneous effects on recidivism. For example, Prop 47 decreased recidivism rates for Prop 47 charges (non-serious and non-violent charges) after AB 109 increased the rates in county jails. However, the recidivism rates among Prop 47 charges are likely to be displaced by the rates among a complementary set of Prop 47 charges within the same charge group. Finally, I find that Prop 47 raised non-violent crime rates, utilizing Los Angeles crime data, especially among non-homeless offenders