Over the last decade, California has undertaken one of the largest criminal justice reform efforts in recent U.S. history. However, little is known about the causal impact of these reforms on the overall incarceration rate and disparities in incarceration rates across demographic subgroups. Using a quasi-experimental synthetic control method and data from the Vera Institute of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau, our results provide strong evidence that California’s reforms have substantially reduced the state’s overall incarceration rate, but that they have resulted in an increase in Latinx-White incarceration disparities. We also find suggestive evidence that the reforms have exacerbated Black-White incarceration disparities and disparities between men and women. Our study is especially relevant at a time when the United States is increasingly interested in reducing the population of people incarcerated and suggests that care must be taken to ensure that reform efforts do not increase incarceration disparities among demographic subgroups.
AbadieA.DiamondA.HainmuellerJ. (2015). Comparative politics and the synthetic control method. American Journal of Political Science, 59, 495–510. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12116
3.
AustinJ. (2016). Regulating California’s prison population: The use of sticks and carrots. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664(1), 84–107.
4.
BallW. D. (2011). Tough on crime (on the state’s dime): How violent crime does not drive California counties’ incarceration rates-and why it should. Georgia State University Law Review, 28, 987–1084.
5.
BartosB. J.KubrinC. E. (2018). Can we downsize our prisons and jails without compromising public safety? Findings from California’s Prop 47. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(3), 693–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12378
CarsonE. A. (2018). Prisoners in 2016. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
9.
CharlesP.MuentnerL.KjellstrandJ. (2019). Parenting and incarceration: Perspectives on father-child involvement during reentry from prison. Social Service Review, 93, 218–261.
10.
DemuthS.SteffensmeierD. (2004). Ethnicity effects on sentence outcomes in large urban courts: Comparisons among White, Black, and Hispanic defendants. Social Science Quarterly, 85, 994–1011. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00255.x
11.
EppersonM. W.Pettus-DavisC. (2017). Smart decarceration: Guiding concepts for an era of criminal justice transformation. In EppersonM.Pettus-DavisC. (Eds.), Smart decarceration: Achieving criminal justice transformation in the 21st century (pp. 3–19). Oxford University Press.
12.
FersztG. G.ClarkeJ. G. (2012). Health care of pregnant women in U.S. state prisons. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 23(2), 557–569.
13.
GalianiS.QuistorffB. (2017). The synth_runner package: Utilities to automate synthetic control estimation using synth. Stata Journal, 17, 834–849. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867X1801700404
14.
GossJ.HayesJ. (2018). California’s changing prison population. Public Policy Institute of California.
15.
GottliebA. (2017). Incarceration and relative poverty in cross-national perspective: The moderating role of female employment rates and welfare state generosity. Social Service Review, 91, 293–318.
16.
GottliebA.MahabirM. (2019). The effect of multiple types of intimate partner violence on maternal criminal justice involvement. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518820705
LofstromM.RaphaelS. (2016). Incarceration and crime: Evidence from California’s public safety realignment reform. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664, 196–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215599732
24.
LofstromM.RaphaelS.GrattetR. (2014). Public safety realignment and recidivism. Public Policy Institute of California.
25.
LondonC. (2011). Racial impact statements: A proactive approach to addressing racial disparities in prison populations. Law & Inequality, 29, 211–248.
26.
LynchM. (2019). Focally concerned about focal concerns: A conceptual and methodological critique of sentencing disparities research. Justice Quarterly, 36(7), 1148–1175.
27.
National Research Council. (2014). The growth of incarceration in the United States: Exploring causes and consequences. National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18613
Pettus-DavisC.EppersonM. W. (2015). From mass incarceration to smart decarceration (Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative Working Paper No. 4). American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.
30.
PickettJ. T. (2016). Reintegrative populism: Public opinion and the criminology of downsizing. Criminology & Public Policy, 15, 131–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12191
VermaA. (2015). The law before: Legacies and ratios in penal reform. Law & Society Review, 49(4), 847–882.
46.
VermaA. (2016). A turning point in mass incarceration? Local imprisonment trajectories and decarceration under California’s realignment. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664(1), 108–135.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
