Complaints against cops fell with body cams, but questions remain
Originally posted in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The San Francisco Chronicle quotes CJCJ’s Senior Research Fellow Mike Males in an article on current crime trends in California in the eighth year of its “justice reform era.”
From the article:
California is entering the eighth year of its “criminal justice reform era,” if you ask the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco. We asked senior research fellow Mike Males what trends criminal justice experts are seeing in the state.
Q: What California crime statistic shocks you?
A: There are now more Californians 50 to 59 years old getting arrested than all teenagers. When I was in criminology classes, that could have never occurred. These are drug-driven offenses and property offenses. Even with the reforms to reduce the offenses, 50- to 59-year-olds are continuing to show a problem. We used to arrest over 400,000 teens a year. Now it’s down to 100,000, an 80 percent decrease in the rate of youth crime. With the 15- to 19-year-olds, the teenagers, all goes very well for the future because they’re less likely to age into criminals.
Q: What has changed about crime in California?
A: What we’re dealing with now is not the crime we had 30 years ago, when the biggest concern was inner-city gang violence. Today, the biggest problem is an aging, drug-abusing population. Problems have accumulated over the years. So we’re seeing people cycle in and out of the criminal justice system. These are people whose addictions have built up from the time they were 25 to 50, so the fastest increase in crime is people in their 50s.