Preview: Full slate of bills at first Senate Criminal Justice hearing next week

The Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee has finally posted the agenda for its first meeting of the 83rd Legislature. They're getting started late (because most of the committee members have been tied up with the budget) so it's quite a long agenda. Here are a few items that jumped out at me:

Innocence, prosecutor misconduct bills
A couple of good reform bills are on there: SB 344 allowing habeas writs based on false or discredited forensics, which was the subject of an excellent recent story by Maurice Chammah at the Texas Tribune, and SB 825 making grievances related to prosecutorial misconduct public records and extending the statute of limitations for State Bar sanctions when prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence. See the discussion in this Grits post.

Felony for use of unsecured wi-fi?
State Sen. Dan Patrick has a rather odd bill up, SB 249, that on its face appears to potentially criminalize getting onto someone else's unsecured wifi. Currently Section 33.02(b-1) of the Penal Code makes it a state jail felony Class B misdemeanor if, with intent to "defraud or harm another, or alter, damage, or delete property, the person knowingly accesses a computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner." (Ed. note: It's a state jail felony if you've been convicted twice before or the network belongs to the government.) To that list, Patrick's bill would also criminalize accessing a system to "obtain a benefit." Since accessing the internet for free is a benefit, and effective consent is defined in the penal code as "consent by a person legally authorized to act for the owner," on its face accessing someone's wi-fi without their express permission would be a crime. Personally, I consider leaving wi-fi unsecured simply common courtesy, though internet service providers would like to restrict it for their own commercial benefit. As far as I'm concerned, criminalizing a neighbor using my wi-fi is akin to criminalizing their reading by my porch light. People can always restrict access if it bothers them. I don't think Sen. Patrick has fully thought through the unintended consequences this legislation. (MORE: From the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog.)

Introducing prior bad acts in guilt phase of sex-offender trials
A bill by Sen. Joan Huffman which Grits criticized last session, this time styled SB 12, is back again for a repeat: The bill would upend rules 404 and 405 of the Texas Rules of Evidence in trials of alleged child molesters, allowing evidence of past crimes in lieu of provable facts in the current case. When it came up last session, state Sen. Robert Duncan, a Lubbock Republican, expressed concern that it would allow juries to consider "allegations that have not even been vetted by a grand jury." Sen. Royce West argued strongly on the Senate floor the bill would result in "more wrongful convictions." The philosophy behind this bill was articulated by the Vichy policeman in the movie Casa Blanca: "Round up the usual suspects!" If you were guilty before, obviously you must be guilty this time. The bill analysis says the legislation would "provide prosecutors with a much needed tool" to win cases, but a prosecutor's duty is to seek justice, not convictions. See excellent Houston Chronicle coverage of the version that passed the Senate but died in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in 2011.

Needless expansion of wiretap authority
Another bill by Huffman, SB 188, would expand the array of law enforcement entities authorized to perform wiretaps.This is a solution looking for a problem. Presently local agencies that want to perform wiretaps must have the Department of Public Safety do it, a system which has worked fine for many years. Indeed, local law enforcement agencies rarely use wiretaps, which are mostly performed at the federal level. In 2011, for example, there were just two wiretaps performed on behalf of local Texas agencies - both in Travis County. Given that incredibly low volume there's just no need to delegate additional authority to the locals.

Make counties report case disposition data
Sen. Huffman also has a good bill up, SB 262, which would codify successful incentives informally imposed by the Governor's office to make counties report case disposition data to the state. Lots of problems occur because arrests or indictments may be reported but dispositions, including acquittals, dismissals and reductions of charges frequently fall through the cracks. Under the bill, before counties could receive grant money from the Governor's Criminal Justice Division they'd have to certify with DPS that they'd reported 90% of case dispositions in the previous year. While arguably reporting rates should be even higher, 90% is a far cry from where many counties were at just a short time ago.

Prostitution prevention
Chairman Whitmire has another bill on the agenda, SB 484, which would create mandatory specialty courts related to prostitution prevention and diversion (see the bill text for more details) in counties with more than 200,000 people, but only if they are able to secure state or federal grant funding. They could also charge fees to defendants not to exceed $1,000, but many will be indigent and anyway that's likely not enough by itself to cover the costs. Dallas pioneered this model and by all accounts it has worked extraordinarily well. Counties that refuse to apply for grants for that purpose would lose all their state support for their local probation departments, which is a pretty darn strong incentive. One potential problem: Many of those federal grant funds may dry up if the sequester remains unresolved.

Regulating specialty courts, excluding violent felons
Sen Huffman has a bill, SB 462, which, according to the bill analysis, "consolidates Texas statutes by creating a new Subtitle K within the Government Code where all relevant specialty court provisions can be easily located; improves oversight of specialty court programs by requiring them to register with the criminal justice division of the Office of the Governor and follow programmatic best practices in order to be eligible to receive state and federal grant funds; and changes the composition of the Governor's Specialty Courts Advisory Council to nine members and requires the council to recommend programmatic best practices to the criminal justice division." It would also exclude defendants from participating in specialty courts if they'd been previously convicted of serious, violent (3g) offenses. The number of specialty courts in the state has ballooned but their day to day practices vary from judge to judge, so Grits understands the desire for greater uniformity and oversight. But excluding past 3g offenders may be a mistake. If the new offense was minor enough to otherwise qualify for participation in a specialty court, IMO strong probation closely supervised by a judge is more likely to rehabilitate than a relatively short prison stint.

Providing punishment for 17-year old capital defendants in legal limbo
Yet another bill by Huffman, SB 187, aims to fix the legal limbo that presently exists for 17-year old capital murder defendants, for whom the US Supreme Court has eliminated all legal punishments under Texas law. (See prior Grits coverage.) Seventeen year olds are adults under Texas law but juveniles according to the US Supreme Court, which has eliminated the death penalty and life without parole for juveniles. (States can still offer LWOP sentences, but it cannot be the only alternative.) Huffman's bill would create two sentencing options for 17-year olds, life and life without parole. IMO a regular "life" sentence would be perfectly acceptable for 17-year olds. Paying for a 17 year-old to stay in prison till they're 90, at $18,000+ per year, would cost more than $1.3 million in 2012 dollars. Allowing such youth to become eligible for parole after 30 or 40 years - and of course the parole board can always keep them in longer if their behavior in prison warrants it - makes a lot more sense to me. Another way to go, though with much more sweeping consequences, might be to simply change the state's definition  of a juvenile for criminal justice purposes to comport with interpretations by SCOTUS. Either way, the state has to do something on this issue. Right now there are no legal sentences for 17 year old capital defendants in Texas.

There is a lot more on the agenda so go here to see the full list of bills the Senate Criminal Justice Committee will hear on Tuesday.

I got your Big Government right here: Growth in TX convictions unhinged from crime levels

One purpose of this blog is to hone arguments in a more informal arena - using readers as a sort of raucous, unmannerly focus group to vet and refine them - before they're presented in more formal settings such as legislative hearings, public policy reports, and the like. So I was pleased when a combative commenter came forward in a recent post to criticize how I'd portrayed crime rates, which Grits said were declining. While that's true, Texas population increased about 20% over the last decade, meaning that even though crime rates per 100,000 dropped 25%, overall numbers of reported crime either remained steady or dropped only slightly throughout the decade. Here's how my intrepid critic suggested we should think about index crimes in Texas since the turn of the century, expressed as a fraction of the 2001 reported index-crime total:

2001 - 1.00
2002 - 1.03
2003 - 1.04
2004 - 1.03
2005 - 1.01
2006 - 0.98
2007 - 1.01
2008 - 1.00
2009 - 1.02
2010 - 0.97
2011 - 0.91

His point was that, rather than crime declining, with Texas' growing population, the actual total number of reported index crimes remained mostly steady, dropping significantly only recently. Fair enough. And a clever way to present the data. I agree with my anonymous critic it allows for a better apples-to-apples comparison to the other data discussed. So now let's compare reported crime figures to a similar ratio calculating the total number of felony convictions and deferred adjudication verdicts secured by Texas prosecutors over the same period:

2001: 1.00
2002: 1.05
2003: 1.18
2004: 1.20
2005: 1.28
2006: 1.30
2007: 1.42
2008: 1.37
2009: 1.38
2010: 1.36
2011: 1.42

To me, that says that Texas prosecutors no longer need more crime to secure more convictions, for reasons Glenn Reynolds has articulated. Prosecution is a growth industry. Here are the two ratios displayed together graphically, along with a similar metric for growth in arrests:

Convictions, Arrests and Reported Index Crime as a Fraction of 2001 levels, through 2011

Don't like Big Government? There's your Big Government. Find the underlying data, from various sources, in this chart.

See how increases in felony convictions and deferred adjudications have become disconnected from the amount of reported crime or even the number of arrests, rising at far higher rates? If the Legislature wants to close more prison units they must reduce upward pressure on prison admissions over the long term, and this chart shows where that pressure is coming from. The state could chop that top ratio down to size quickly by adjusting drug possession offenses down one notch and/or indexing property crime category thresholds to inflation, but will the Legislature, particularly brand spanking new Criminal Jurisprudence and Corrections Committees in the House with rookie chairmen, be willing to take such bold steps with no (public) plan on the table and little or no time to prepare? That remains to be seen. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

Related:

• Ham Sandwich Nation: Prosecution in Texas is a growth industry
• Direct sentences to prison up despite declining Texas crime

Direct sentences to prison up despite declining Texas crime

Texas policymakers in recent years have nearly broken their arms patting themselves on the back for the state's much ballyhooed criminal-justice reforms. In a sense, it's justified. The 2007 probation reforms cut against the grain of decades of lock-em-up legislation and the state has curbed growth of incarceration levels. At one point, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) was projected to house 17,000 more prisoners by 2012 than actually turned out to be the case.

Still, Texas' results are disappointing compared to jurisdictions that incarcerate far fewer people. Texas houses more prisoners today than any other state including much-more populous California. New York, where crime rates are far lower than here (see the chart), imprisons its citizens at a rate of 288 per 100,000 compared to 648 per 100,000 in Texas. (If incarcerating more people reduces crime, somebody forgot to tell the Empire State.)

Crime rates descended significantly across the country in the 1990s and continued to decline over the most recent decade. In Texas, crime ebbed somewhat but remains higher than in other large states and nationally. Texas crime rates per 100,000 people dropped by 25% from 2002 to 2011, but reported crime in Texas is still much higher than the national average, much less New York (source).

Texas vs. National, New York

Index Crime Rates, 2001-2011

Oddly, despite fewer reported crimes, the Texas criminal justice system successfully prosecuted more people for felonies throughout most of this period. The total number of Texas criminal cases resulting in convictions or deferred adjudication (a form of probation) continued to grow throughout the decade, topping out in 2011 and defying lower crime trends (source):

 

Until quite recently, arrests in Texas continued to increase despite declining crime, topping out in 2009. Then, over the next two years, arrest numbers began to precipitously drop (source: 2012 data not available yet):

Given lower crime rates, recent declines in arrests and the 2012 nosedive in conviction numbers, it's possible, but by no means certain, that criminal prosecutions and prison admissions may soon begin (after a frustratingly long lag time) to reflect declining crime trends. But it remains to be seen whether those patterns a) continue or b) affect admissions to TDCJ. So far, those reductions have not resulted in a lower prison population.

Confoundingly, despite declining crime, the number of people entering TDCJ each year has remained remarkably stable (TDCJ annual statistical reports are available online only back to 2005; ditto for probation revocation data from TDCJ-CJAD).

TDCJ Admissions by Source

 

Prison admissions due to probation revocations remained fairly steady since 2005, declining by a scant 3%. Parole revocations, OTOH, declined by 38% while the rate of prisoner releases on parole ticked up slightly. By contrast, felony prosecutions resulting in direct prison sentences actually increased by 12% since 2005, despite overall crime declines. That explains why the Legislative Budget Board projects, paradoxically, that prison admissions will increase in coming years. The trend can't be explained by crime rates or arrest patterns and appears to stem primarily from prosecutorial charging and plea bargain decisions.

See the spreadsheet underlying these charts here.

RELATED: Ham Sandwich Nation: Prosecution in Texas is a growth industry

Is Texas border crime "overwhelming" or at historic lows?

In an item titled "Texas police face continuing border crime problems," we learn from KPRC-TV that Brooks County has ceased receiving "Border Star" grant funds:

While it still receives some federal funding through partnerships with surrounding counties, the Brooks County Sheriff's Office recently lost its state Border Star funding for the quarter. 

[Sheriff Urbino] Martinez explained that with only a staff of three administrators, who also handle calls for help and take missing persons reports, the office couldn't keep up with all the paperwork required to secure the grant.

The story portrays Brooks County, population 7,200, as "facing an overwhelming amount of crime."

Brooks County averages two high-speed chases every day involving either drugs or human smuggling. 

This year, the county is also contending with 60 missing person cases and 116 bodies of illegal immigrants found murdered or dead from exposure.

Sheriff's office records show the number of bodies found in Brooks County in 2012 has more than doubled from 2011.

Grits' understanding was that most of the bodies found in Brooks County were illegal immigrants who died from exposure trying to walk through the Texas heat past border patrol checkpoints. The Austin Statesman reported last year that "Most of the bodies were those of illegal immigrants crossing the brush trying to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias and not victims of direct assaults, according to the Brooks County sheriff's department." Similarly, at the Texas Observer, Melissa del Bosque reported last year that "One of the deadliest corridors along the U.S.-Mexico border is a remote stretch of ranchland in tiny Brooks County." But I suppose it's possible there are murders interspersed with those more pedestrian, if no less tragic, deaths from heat and dehydration. If so, Grits has never heard additional details.

Remarkably, asset forfeiture made up 37.5% of the Brooks County Sheriff's budget last year. While "the sheriff's office's actual budget for 2011-2012 was $620,186.90," reported the TV station, that was supplemented with "an additional $387,834 from asset seizure funds."

With all this action reported by the Brooks County Sheriff, it's ironic and puzzling that larger cities along the border continue to see crime fall to historically low rates. USA Today had a story last week titled, "Violent crime falls in US cities along the Mexico border," where we learn that, remarkably, "Ten of the 13 largest cities in Texas, Arizona and California closest to the Mexico border recorded reductions in overall violent crime, according to the latest FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. Eleven of the 13 also saw reductions in property crime, including burglary and car theft." Here's a notable excerpt from that data-driven article:

While the largest of the border cities -- San Diego and El Paso -- also reported declines, murders in each city jumped in 2011. Yet city officials cautioned that the rise in homicides could not be attributed to a spillover in violence from Mexico.

El Paso recorded 16 murders in 2011, up from just five in 2010, the fewest since 1964. This year, the number is up to 23 killings. But police Sgt. Chris Mears says the larger numbers are within range of the average for the past 20 years.

"None of these homicides are in any way spillover violence from Mexico," Mears says, adding that a number of the homicides have involved child abuse resulting in death.

San Diego County Sheriff Cmdr. David Myers says the rise in murder there â(euro) " from 29 in 2010 to 38 in 2011 â(euro) " was largely attributed to a "flurry" of domestic-related disputes. None of the deaths were linked to Mexican violence, though Myers says the cartels remain active in the region.

El Paso’s proximity to one of the most violent cities in Mexico and world, Ciudad Juarez, prompted widespread fear last year that Mexican violence -- which claimed 3,400 lives in Juarez alone in 2010 -- was washing into U.S. border cities.

But a 2011 USA TODAY analysis of crime data reported by 1,600 law enforcement agencies in four border states found that violent crime rates on the U.S. side of the southwestern border have been falling for years.

The analysis concluded that U.S. cities near the border are statistically safer, on average, than others in their states. The new FBI numbers follow that same pattern.

It's hard to square these sorts of stories. The Brooks County Sheriff reports very few offenses in annual Uniform Crime Reports, which form the basis for USA Today's calculations. The FY 2011 jurisdiction-level report isn't up on the DPS website yet, but they reported one murder in 2009 - the first since the turn of the century - and none in 2010, when the Sheriff's office reported 14 total index-crime offenses. That hardly seems like an overwhelming caseload. One also wonders, if the agency engages in two high-speed chases per day, why those offenders haven't shown up over the last decade ( FY '11 and '12 data aren't available yet from DPS) in the Sheriff's UCR reports? One senses a whiff of exaggeration in the Sheriff's breathless account.

Is border crime "overwhelming" or low as ever? As is often the case one can find news sources, like those quoted in this post, that take both sides of the question. But when one source relies on data analysis and the other on anecdote and hype, my gut generally tells me to go with the folks crunching the data.

Is crime rising or falling? It depends which Justice Department source you ask

Doug Berman recently pointed out an incongruous set of federal reports on crime rates. As background, there are two national reporting measures for crime rates: Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) compiled by the FBI from data submitted by local departments, and the National Crime Victims Survey (NCVS) performed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is a rolling sample surveyed over time (they recently altered their methodology). The UCR measures crimes actually reported by police, while the NCVS uses a national polling sample to perform a longitudinal (over time) analysis of crimes experienced by households, including both crimes reported by police and those which were not. (E.g., when crimes go unreported for personal or family reasons.)

In recent years, both the UCR and the NCVS have shown crime consistently declining, despite myriad naysayers who insisted what they reported could not possibly be true. For the last two decades, the two have more or less gone down in tandem with historic crime declines culminating in 40 year lows by both measures, results which seemed unimaginable not long ago. In recent months, however, the FBI's UCR data said reported crime last year had declined. "In 2011, all four of the violent crime offense categories—murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault—declined nationwide when compared with data from 2010." See Grits coverage of the UCR report from last June.

Meanwhile, the latest NCVS reported somewhat startlingly countervailing trends, declaring their sample of crime victims reported increased crime rates between 2010 and 2011. The NCVS reported, in part:

Between 2010 and 2011, the rate of violent victimization increased 17 percent, from 19.3 to 22.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older. The increase in total violence was due to a 22 percent increase in the number of aggravated and simple assaults. There was no statistically significant change in the number of rapes or sexual assaults and robberies.

While the percentage change in violent crime from 2010 to 2011 is relatively large, the actual difference between the rates for those years (3.3 victimizations per 1,000) is below the average annual change in violent crime (4.3 victimizations per 1,000) over the past two decades. The low rates make the percentage change large, but crime still remains at historically low levels. Since 1993, the rate of violent victimization declined 72 percent.

The rate of total property crime increased 11 percent, from 125.4 to 138.7 victimizations per 1,000 households between 2010 and 2011. Household burglary increased 14 percent, from 25.8 to 29.4 victimizations per 1,000 households.

In 2011, 49 percent of violent victimizations and 37 percent of property victimization were reported to police. From 2010 to 2011, there was no statistically significant change in the percentage of violent victimizations reported to the police. The percentage of property victimizations reported to the police declined from 39 percent in 2010 to 37 percent in 2011. 

How to reconcile these data? With a few caveats, I'm inclined to believe the UCR, for the moment. That's because it relies on actually reported crime as opposed to statistical estimates from a sample. A tainted sample, even if unintended, taints results, while the UCR just totals up the data reported by local departments and comes up with a number.  It's not based on probabilities or statistical estimates, it's a report of concrete episodes reported and investigated by law enforcement.

I know some commenters will say that police departments underreport crime to make their stats look good, and while Grits grants that happens, let me iterate that I don't believe methods of stat manipulation remotely account for the marked crime declines witnessed at the macro-level over the last two decades. Whether such usually localized tactics contribute to the differentials in these reports no one can say for sure, but I'm inclined to suspect other factors. OTOH, who knows what's behind the conflicting data? As Doug Berman declared upon observing the recent trends, "I do not know whether to worry about crime going up or to worry about whether we can be sure if crime is going up or going down." Certainly it's impossible to productively debate the causes of crime trends if we don't have tools to reliably measure them.

Perhaps the NCVS report indicates declining crime rates have reached a floor, or at least a temporary plateau. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics emphasized, "The low rates make the percentage change large, but crime still remains at historically low levels." The point about crime rates being at modern lows brings us to the unwieldy measuring sticks being used to analyze them. Both the UCR and the NCVS are ridiculously broad  measures that naturally fluctuate - to the point that any responsible criminologist would emphasize that a trend cannot be pronounced until it repeats for 2-3 years - so any such conclusion would be premature. But the conflicting, recent data at least raise the possibility that recent downward crime trends may not hold for the foreseeable future. If the NCVS declines next year along with the UCR data, then this may have been a statistical fluke. If the upward trend continues in victimization reports, however, one would expect reported crime to eventually rise as well.

Your guess is as good as mine so let me know what you think in the comments: Is crime declining or rising? At the moment, you can find a respected federal source to support either view.

Texas drug prosecutions increased 116% over past 20 years

In an era of generally declining crime, this data-driven perspective on the sources of increasing incarceration was offered in the Office of Court Administration's latest annual statistical report for FY 2011 (pdf, p. 37):

Two categories of criminal cases increased more than 100 percent over the past 20 years. Felony assault or attempted\murder cases increased 138 percent (from 12,452 to 29,669 cases). Felony and misdemeanor drug offense cases increased 116 percent (from 62,872 to 135,787 cases); however, the number of cases filed each year generally declined from 2007 to 2011.

“Other felonies” increased by 85 percent over the same period (from 26,472 to 48,849 cases).

It's hard to say whether the increase in "felony assault or attempted murder" charges stemmed from greater violence - which runs against other reported trends including DPS data and crime victim surveys - or harsher charging decisions by Texas prosecutors than in years past, which could also explain the data. But the 116% increase in drug cases speaks for itself, as does the 85% increase in "other" crimes, which is code for the hundreds of specialty "enhancements" that have been added to the criminal code over the years, but don't really seem to fit into traditional crime categories. In any event, I thought I'd share those interesting snippets.

Deincarceration in California: Evaluating 'realignment' one year in

Last year federal courts ordered California to radically reduce its prison population, and though it hasn't yet met targets set by the judges, their number of prisoners declined radically. That left Texas as the state incarcerating the most people, though the Golden State's population is half-again the size of ours. Many California inmates were shifted to county jails while an even greater number ended up on some form of community supervision. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of California's "realignment" scheme, which shifted responsibility for supervising certain low-level offenders to counties. According to the group, Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)

"The good news about realignment is that there were 30,000 fewer people who spent last night in a cell than there were when Gov. Brown was elected," said Emily Harris of Californians United for a Responsible Budget. "Because the state is spending $800 million less on Corrections than we did two years ago, we avoided another $800 million in cuts to services for poor children and the elderly."

The state's prison population has dropped to 124,701 from a high of 173,479 in 2006 while the state's jail population has increased by 2,849 over the last year. Crime rates continue to fall statewide.

"If we can have 30,000 fewer people locked up in a time of massive unemployment and widespread foreclosures without seeing an upturn in crime, then it is clear we didn't need to have all those people locked up in the first place," said Harris.

The ACLU of Northern California offered less sanguine figures on the scope of reduced incarceration, estimating that:

while the state's prison population has decreased by nearly 25,000 during the past year, counties have increased their own jail capacity by more than 7,000 beds, spending tens of millions of dollars in state realignment dollars to expand jail capacity. Billions of additional dollars in the form of state lease-revenue bonds are in the pipeline for even more jail construction that would create an additional 10,000 beds. This despite the ACLU's new polling data showing that 75 percent of state voters favor investing public money in more prevention and alternatives to jail for non-violent offenders.

That group issued a briefing paper (pdf) predicting that short-term incarceration reductions wouldn't last unless more resources are devoted to programming aimed at supervising offenders in the community and reducing recidivism. An appendix to that document included polling data focused in part on public attitudes toward pretrial detention, presenting:

to voters a hypothetical match-up between two potential candidates for the State Legislature – one candidate who voted in favor of allowing more monitoring in the community instead of jail for people awaiting trial for non-violent offenses running against a candidate who voted against this proposal. The reform candidate won by a nearly 3-to-1 margin with 63 percent to only 23 percent for the candidate opposing the reform. The reform candidate drew bipartisan support and led among Democrats (74 percent to 14 percent), independents (64 percent to 22 percent) and even Republicans (46 percent to 36 percent).

As is the case here in Texas, a sizable majority of inmates in county jails (nearly 70%) are incarcerated while awaiting trial.

It should be noted that the ACLU-NC figures and those from CURB aren't entirely contradictory: CURB compares the present prison population to a 2006 high. And the the ACLU-NC estimated 7,000 beds of expanded jail capacity, while CURB said the the number actually incarcerated in county jails "increased by 2,849 over the last year." While CURB says the prison population reduced "nearly 30,000" in the last year and ACLU-NC pegged the reduction at "nearly 25,000," the San Francisco Chronicle put the figure at 27,000. So the precise figure is apparently a matter of some dispute.

A couple of news stories commemorating realignment's anniversary stand out. For instance, though Alameda County (Oakland), "was already sending 30 percent fewer people to prison than the state average, the county still managed to cut new prison admissions by 39 percent during the first nine months of prison realignment" without a noticeable uptick in crime. There have been some problems, though, as "The already-thin probation department staff had to adjust to a new approach: rehabilitation of its inmates, rather than the traditional 'trail 'em and nail 'em,' or watching for violations that would land probationers back in prison."

There has been tremendous variation among counties regarding how realignment has been implemented, reported the San Francisco Chronicle: "Stanislaus County, for example, has about half the population of San Francisco but houses nearly 1,200 inmates in its county jails - nearly as many as San Francisco's 1,500. The Stanislaus County jails were at capacity even before realignment took effect, and Sheriff Adam Christianson said the influx of inmates this past year - more than the state forecast - forced the jail to release hundreds of criminals, whom he called "the best of the worst." San Francisco, by contrast, "gave probation 81 percent of its realignment funding and spent 19 percent on health and treatment services. A tiny fraction went to the Sheriff's Department, which is operating jails at below its population capacity. The only new beds in the pipeline are at a center intended to help state prisoners transition back into the community during their last two months before release." 

Even critics acknowledge that reported crime statewide hasn't noticeably increased, though they're quick to point to anecdotes to support such a meme. Said the President of the tuff-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, "We're not trying to make a statewide case yet, the numbers aren't up, but when you see fires pop up all over the forest, you don't wait a year to say the forest burned down." Given that California's crime rate last year hit a 42 year low, Grits wouldn't be surprised to see a slight uptick, even if realignment hadn't occurred, but I also consider it equally likely the state will follow national trends and see crime continue to drop. My personal view is that with incarceration levels at all time highs, the marginal benefit of extra incarceration is minimal, just as the marginal extra crime from reduced incarceration is likely to be low. Especially for violent offenses, I wouldn't expect realignment as it's played out in California - with significant extra funds shifted to counties to aid with supervision - to have a tremendous impact on crime one way or the other. But with such wide disparities in how counties are using that money, it's difficult to judge at this early stage, and of course, time will tell.