{"id":238801,"date":"2016-11-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/note-from-toni-are-ab-109-and-proposition-47-really-working\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T07:00:00","slug":"note-from-toni-are-ab-109-and-proposition-47-really-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/note-from-toni-are-ab-109-and-proposition-47-really-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Note from Toni: Are AB 109 and Proposition 47 really working?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Toni G. Atkins |\u00a0Notes from Toni<\/p>\n

As I have attended neighborhood meetings here in San Diego and talked to community members, I\u2019ve heard the assertion more than once that AB 109 and Proposition 47 have resulted in higher crime rates.<\/p>\n

Passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor in 2011, AB 109 was a response to a severe problem in California: overcrowding in our state prisons.<\/p>\n

Also referred to as \u201crealignment,\u201d it took responsibility for supervising certain felony offenders and state prison parolees away from state prisons and state parole agents and gave it to county jails and probation officers.<\/p>\n

\"Assemblymember<\/a>
Toni G. Atkins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Counties were provided with state funding to pay for the increased caseload and given significant flexibility in the way they implemented AB 109. Those were key considerations in my support for AB 109.<\/p>\n

Along those same lines, Prop. 47, which was placed on the ballot as a citizens-led initiative and approved by California voters in 2014, reclassified certain nonviolent felony crimes as misdemeanors and made some prisoners eligible for possible resentencing, pending a thorough review.<\/p>\n

It also created a fund for the generated savings, to be spent on programs aimed at reducing prison recidivism.<\/p>\n

Many law enforcement officials \u2014 including San Diego\u2019s police chief \u2014 express concern that these two measures are making the public less safe, although researchers say it\u2019s too early to define the impacts of Prop. 47.<\/p>\n

As for AB 109, I came across a news story that should be part of our ongoing conversation. It was a Sept. 29 KQED story, written by Marisa Lagos, that reported AB 109 has not increased crime; this was based on a study by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), which Lagos calls the \u201cmost comprehensive study of realignment\u2019s impacts.\u201d You can search online for the headline, \u201cFive Years Later, Many See Criminal Justice Realignment As Success,\u201d to read it yourself.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s good news. As UC Irvine criminologist Charis Kubrin said in the story, it means \u201cwe can downsize our prisons \u2026 without harming public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the KQED story noted, AB 109 was a controversial idea.<\/p>\n

Matt Cate, who in 2011 oversaw the state\u2019s prisons, warned Gov. Jerry Brown at that time that the plan was risky. These days, Cate is executive director of the California State Association of Counties \u2014 counties bear the brunt of the new responsibility \u2014 and he sees it as a success.<\/p>\n

We already knew that massive-scale incarceration doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s enormously expensive for taxpayers and that money could be spent on many other worthwhile programs, from education and childcare to public health and targeted tax credits for job creation. Too often, inmates come out of prisons worse than they went in; we just haven\u2019t done a very good job on the rehabilitation side.<\/p>\n

I believe that rehabilitation is the right policy goal in the short term. I\u2019m confident that the counties that focus holistically on reintegrating former inmates will be those that see less crime and reduced recidivism. In the long term, we need to focus on prevention through policies that promote healthy children, healthy families, and healthy communities. County officials in San Diego \u2014 the Sheriff, the health and human services director, the chief probation officer, and the District Attorney \u2014 are leaders in this arena.<\/p>\n

Still, not everything in the KQED story was positive about AB 109. It noted that the PPIC released a paper more recently saying that predicted savings from realignment haven\u2019t yet materialized. Costs have merely been shifted to counties, where jails are experiencing overcrowding.<\/p>\n

Given that some in law enforcement still have serious reservations and given that counties are feeling the growing pains, this issue is not completely settled in my mind. It\u2019s likely that more needs to be done to make sure the policy is working at all levels, perhaps with additional post-release rehabilitation programs, housing assistance and more resources for counties to support our local sheriffs and probation departments.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m encouraged that the data are pointing to success so far, but this is the state\u2019s most important public safety issue, so I assure you, I\u2019ll be monitoring it closely and continuing the dialogue with you.<\/p>\n

\u2014Toni G. Atkins is the Speaker Emeritus of the California State Assembly. For more information, please visit her website, <\/em>asmdc.org\/members\/a78 <\/em>where you can sign up for her e-newsletter or get the latest news on legislation and other activities. You also may follow her on Twitter, @toniatkins.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Toni G. Atkins |\u00a0Notes from Toni As I have attended neighborhood meetings here in San Diego and talked to community members, I\u2019ve heard the assertion more than once that AB 109 and Proposition 47 have resulted in higher crime rates. Passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor in 2011, AB 109 was […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":859,"featured_media":233104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Note from Toni: Are AB 109 and Proposition 47 really working?","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}