Video: Crime after Proposition 47 and the Pandemic

Nearly a decade after voters passed Proposition 47, policy discussions still center around the reform. But responses to the pandemic have also impacted criminal justice outcomes in California. Last week, PPIC researcher Magnus Lofstrom outlined key findings on changes to crime resulting from Prop 47 and pandemic reductions in incarceration and enforcement; PPIC researcher Brandon Martin also weighed in.

Proposition 47 reclassified certain drug and property felonies to misdemeanors as a part of efforts to respond to a federal court order to address prison overcrowding; savings from lower prison expenses funded different programs. "[Prop 47] brought down the prison population for the first time below the mandated target," Lofstrom said, and arrests for felony drug and property offenses fell 10% and 11%. Due to pandemic responses to crime, however, both felony and misdemeanor arrests for drug and property crimes fell by 36% and 22%.

Crime clearance rates also fell; Lofstrom defined these rates as the share of crimes that lead to arrest and referral to prosecution-and as a measure of the likelihood of apprehension. After Prop 47, clearance rates for property crime fell to 11%, and then they fell to 7% amid the pandemic. For violent crime, clearance rates remained stable in the wake of Prop 47, at 40%, then fell amid the pandemic, and stabilized in 2022.

"A person was half as likely to be apprehended for a property crime in 2022 than in 2014," Lofstrom said and later cited robust literature indicating that a higher likelihood of being apprehended is more effective for deterring crime than longer sentences.

Auto thefts primarily drove a 2.1% rise in property crime due to lower Prop 47 prison populations-and burglary, larceny, and auto theft drove a 1.6% rise in property crime due to lower larceny clearance. Burglary is entering a building to commit theft; larceny is theft without force. The falling jail population pushed up car break-ins while fewer cleared larcenies pushed up car break-ins, car accessory theft, and commercial burglary-all about 2-3%. Amid the pandemic, burglary rose 1.5% due to lower jail populations-this increase was driven by commercial burglaries. Larceny rose 2.8%, in particular car break-ins and theft of car accessories like catalytic converters, with fewer cleared larcenies.

The rate of violent crime in California has diverged from the US over the last decade and was sharpest at the start of the pandemic. For property crime, the California rate jumped in 2015 and 2022.

Lofstrom noted that the Prop 47 and pandemic changes contributed to a small fraction of the total rise in California crime and stressed the lack evidence for increases in crime driven by lower drug arrests.

Overall, the state reduced its prison and jail populations more than 60,000 with Prop 47 and the pandemic, leading to a modest rise in property crime. Lofstrom described the findings as encouraging: "It shows that in spite of these big changes, [reducing incarceration] did not lead to broad impacts on crime." Lofstrom also acknowledged evidence that the pandemic led to a rise in retail theft.

Factors around lower clearance rates, however, need to be understood in order to reverse them. One factor may be that California has the lowest patrol officer rate since 1991. Lofstrom also highlighted the need for evidence-based alternatives to jail and prison. The state has invested $800 million in savings from reduced incarceration, PPIC researcher Brandon Martin explained, funds that have gone into grant programs to address mental health, substance use disorder, efforts to help at-risk kids stay in school, and services to victims of crime.

"With all of those efforts and different programs," Lofstrom said, "it presents an opportunity to do evaluations to identify what works and what doesn't work."