Sept. 1, 2009. A former day room is now used to house prisoners at the California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino. While most of California's prisons are bursting at the seams, the state prison in Chino could have been first and foremost on the minds of three federal judges who recently found the state prison system so overcrowded and conditions so abysmal they took the extraordinary step of ordering officials to release more than 40,000 inmates. (Patrick Tehan/Mercury News)
During the past decade, there’s been an ongoing effort by those with a vested interest in protecting the old, failed approaches of our criminal justice system to spread disinformation about the impact reforms to that broken system have had.
That effort has entered hyperdrive as property crime rates have ticked up from historic lows since the start of the global pandemic. Powerful law enforcement interests hope that will cause collective amnesia, that we all forget the disastrous ruin wrought by the failed “tough on crime” policies of the 1980s and 1990s.
The truth is criminal justice reforms like Proposition 47, approved overwhelmingly by voters nine years ago, have pulled California out of a crisis that included multiple people dying weekly from medical neglect in its overstuffed state prisons, a statewide re-arrest rate of over 75% and the entire state prison system nearly being taken over by the federal government.
We were failing by every conceivable measure to provide the safety Californians deserve.
Proposition 47 promised there was a more effective and sustainable way of creating the durable safety every California community should expect. If, instead of using all the tens of billions of dollars we spend every year for public safety on enforcement and incarceration, we invested some of that money back into local communities and into preventing crime and harm from occurring in the first place, we’d produce better safety outcomes.
Voters were clear when they approved Proposition 47 that the failure of the status quo was no longer acceptable, and that we needed to pursue safety strategies grounded in data, research and science. They should be proud of what they’ve achieved so far.
By no longer sending people accused of petty theft or possession of drugs for personal use to state prison for several years at enormous taxpayer expense, and instead making those crimes punishable by up to a year in local jail, California has accomplished two critical things.
First, the state prison population has been safely reduced to a level below a court-ordered population cap that, if exceeded, could trigger a federal takeover.
Second, the state has saved more than $750 million as a result of that reduction in state prison incarceration. That money has been reallocated back to local communities across the state to fund programs data shows are having remarkable success reducing recidivism, increasing housing and employment stability, and making our communities safer.
Data released by the California Board of State and Community Corrections shows that, statewide, Proposition 47-funded programs saw employment increase threefold since 2017 among participants, while participants’ rates of homelessness fell by nearly half.
The Proposition 47-funded program in San Francisco has shown particularly big declines in homelessness (78% of participants were homeless before programming and just 15% after), while Alameda County’s Proposition 47-funded program has also made big strides reducing homelessness (53% before programming to just 10% after).
Crucially, this success was achieved while crime rates declined steadily. Property crime declined five years in a row after Proposition 47 was enacted, and statewide property crime rates hit some of their lowest levels in recorded history in 2019 and 2020.
Since the pandemic, property crime has ticked up from those historic lows, presenting new challenges we must meet. It’s critical the public be assured that when crime does occur, law enforcement will solve it and use existing law to hold people accountable. Government and law enforcement leaders across the state must double down on their commitment to addressing organized retail theft syndicates.
But it’s also imperative we not forget reforms like Proposition 47 continue to work and show us that true safety for all our communities is possible when we prioritize crime and harm prevention.
Tinisch Hollins is executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, the state’s leading public safety advocacy organization, which co-authored Proposition 47 in 2014.
Originally published at Tinisch Hollins