The Davis Vanguard highlihlights CJCJ’s recent report analyzing Prop. 47’s impact on crime.
J. Stephen Conn | Yolo County Line
“The Vanguard has received evidence now from Davis and West Sacramento showing that, after rises in crime in 2015, crime has moved down early in 2016. The first quarter data for Woodland will not be available until April 15.
The preliminary data shows, at least in Davis and West Sacramento, felony crimes both violent and property, are down. In West Sacramento the trend is dramatic with 2016 levels actually below those from 2014.
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The overall conclusion is that it is too soon to tell – but that is what we argued last month and what we saw with AB 109.
As Mike Males, Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, put it, ‘It is too early to conclusively measure the effects of Proposition 47 on crime rates just one year after the law took effect. The urban crime increase in the first half of 2015 could be a normal fluctuation, such as those that occurred from 1999 to 2001 or from 2005 to 2006 (CJSC, 2016). Initial trends are often reversed later. In the case of Realignment, implemented in 2011, crime initially increased in 2012, but later declined sharply in 2013 and 2014.’”