The Political Dynamics of Justice Reform in The U.S.

directly affected who could go to prison. But we also saw an overall decline in
incarceration. And so that’s to say the jail population just didn’t increase at the same
level that the prison population was reduced.”
Bird credits these improvements to a system of incentives and funding mechanisms
contained in the law. Even as local jurisdictions’ justice systems were expanding, they
were able to tap into government funds that allowed them to individually pursue projects
that reduced incarceration and correctional costs, she says.
Bird joined PPIC in 2012, just as California was beginning a massive wave of reforms.
Along with her colleagues, Bird has helped spearhead an effort to gather data and
analyze “realignments” impact.
But getting to that point was no easy task—and still isn’t. As this reform movement was
hitting its stride, the state was experiencing a “huge data gap,” Bird says. Critical
information was “siloed,” she adds, so much so that crucial data points were not
traveling upstream, making it nearly impossible for the county to conduct its own
analysis.
“Even just to evaluate a policy like ‘realignment’ or many of the subsequent policies that
have followed in this era of reform, you really needed to bring state and local data
together in order to do that,” Bird continues.
“What we were able to learn based on those data is that realignment didn’t have—as
some people feared—it didn’t have huge effects on crime rates and it didn’t actually
have any negative effects on specifically violent crime rates,” she explains. “And that’s
what folks were really worried about. If you reduced incarceration and in some respects
to reduce the turn of going to prison, would we see a big increase in crime and would
we see a big increase in particularly violent crime?”
Even still, it’s “notoriously difficult” to draw conclusions from crime statistics, says
VanSickle.
“What I can say, we did look at crime data in California for the last couple of decades,
and what we see now is that crime remains at historic lows in California,” she says. But
to her larger point, VanSickle says crime rates were up in some counties and down in
others, which is why researchers often scoff at making generalized conclusions about
crime rates and the effect specific laws have had on public safety.
Stockton Rising
It wasn’t that long ago when the city of Stockton was famous for all the wrong reasons.
The city, nestled in San Joaquin County, once had a murder rate that rivaled Chicago,
and in 2012 became the largest American city to file for bankruptcy, still gripping from
the economic downturn four years prior.
Page 97 of 262