Nearly two years ago, we noted a disturbing statistic from half-year preliminary crime data from the FBI. Here is an update from later and more complete data.
Of the categories of crime tracked by the standard statistics, auto theft is the category most likely to have been affected by California's prison realignment program. Auto theft was always a felony. Before realignment, it was therefore a crime for which a state prison sentence was always a possibility, although the judge had discretion to give a lesser sentence. After realignment, auto theft is a crime for which a person can never go to state prison. Not for the 97th offense.
Any year-to-year changes caused by a state's policies are overlayed on
changes for other reasons, one of which is national crime trends. This
graph shows California auto theft rates as a ratio of the national rates
for the years 2004 to 2013. California has always had higher rates
than the country as a whole for as long as the FBI has been tracking
them. But a change in the ratio indicates something has changed here
other than national trends or the factors that have always made our
rates higher.
Realignment was enacted in 2011 and took effect in October, so 2011 is mostly a pre-realignment year. The ratio was remarkably stable from 2004 to 2011. Then it jumped in 2012, the first full year of realignment, and it stayed at that higher level in 2013.
This tends to confirm what common sense would tell us. Promise people that they will never go to state prison for an offense -- and instead be sent to a county jail where overcrowding nearly guarantees release after a short fraction of the sentence -- and more people will choose to commit that offense.
As I noted before, auto theft is a "regressive" crime. It falls hardest on people of modest means. Steal a rich person's car, and he calls his insurance company, gets a temporary rental, and soon gets a replacement car. The clunkers driven by people who can barely afford a car at all are generally not insured against theft and are often their owners' only means of getting to work. For a person in these circumstances, theft of the car is a very serious matter, and it is happening more than it should in California today.
Data for 2004 to 2012 are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics UCR Data Online web page. The 2013 data are from Crime in the United States 2013. The source for both is the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports program.
Here is the graph for the full range tracked by the UCR program:
Realignment was enacted in 2011 and took effect in October, so 2011 is mostly a pre-realignment year. The ratio was remarkably stable from 2004 to 2011. Then it jumped in 2012, the first full year of realignment, and it stayed at that higher level in 2013.
This tends to confirm what common sense would tell us. Promise people that they will never go to state prison for an offense -- and instead be sent to a county jail where overcrowding nearly guarantees release after a short fraction of the sentence -- and more people will choose to commit that offense.
As I noted before, auto theft is a "regressive" crime. It falls hardest on people of modest means. Steal a rich person's car, and he calls his insurance company, gets a temporary rental, and soon gets a replacement car. The clunkers driven by people who can barely afford a car at all are generally not insured against theft and are often their owners' only means of getting to work. For a person in these circumstances, theft of the car is a very serious matter, and it is happening more than it should in California today.
Data for 2004 to 2012 are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics UCR Data Online web page. The 2013 data are from Crime in the United States 2013. The source for both is the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports program.
Here is the graph for the full range tracked by the UCR program:
Very interesting data, though are there any notable break-downs in the data concerning regional differences. My sense is that different regions are handling realignment's consequences differently and I wonder if that reality find any expression in the theft data.
I would rename this post "Dude where are my Christmas presents" as a bunch of stuff we ordered for Christmas via Amazon were stolen off my porch (Long Beach area). The neighbors saw it happen, and called the police but the culprits got away. I don't think it was over $950 but anyone who stoops low enough to steal Christmas presents is scum in my book.
To Mr. Berman's question, there are regional differences. Santa Clara, which embraced Realignment more than most counties, with a much higher ratio of sentencing thieves to programs rather than confinement, suffered a 20% increase in vehicle theft. That was more than double the increase for most other California counties. But generally, the blue collar counties that always suffer the most crime saw larger comparable increases in vehicle theft, than the wealthy coastal counties. But as a sentencing expert, you already know that crime never washes equally over all communities. Those living in government housing, those stuck in poor inner-city neighborhoods and those living in California's once thriving central valley, where the main industry (agriculture) has been deprived of water by Congress, and regulated to death by federal and state environmental laws, are being hit hardest by the increased crime encouraged by Realignment.