Realignment and Recidivism Revisited: A Closer Look at the Effects of California’s Historic Correctional Reform on Recidivism Outcomes

• DOI: 10.1177/08874034211058705
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Mia Bird,Ryken Grattet,Viet Nguyen
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211058705

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2022, Vol. 33(5) 536 –558

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034211058705

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Article

Realignment and Recidivism

Revisited: A Closer Look at

the Effects of California’s

Historic Correctional Reform

on Recidivism Outcomes

Mia Bird1, Viet Nguyen2, and Ryken Grattet3

Abstract

California’s 2011 Public Safety Realignment has received considerable attention

nationally as a watershed moment in the movement to downsize prisons. The

present study leverages data collected in 12 California counties to provide the most

comprehensive examination to date of how Realignment has impacted recidivism for

the key offender groups targeted in the reform. We find small to modest increases in

rearrest in three of four groups targeted in the reform. The fourth group experienced

moderate decreases in rearrest. Moreover, all groups experienced decreases in

reconviction, which gives credence to the idea that a significant reprioritization of

who should be in prison can positively affect public safety. These findings point to

the complex ways that reforms like Realignment can affect custodial and community-

based supervision systems by changing incentives for law enforcement and the people

who supervise offenders. Our conclusions discuss the implications for other states

and systems considering similar reforms.

Keywords

Public Safety Realignment, correctional reform, recidivism, prison downsizing

1University of California, Berkeley, USA

2University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

3University of California, Davis, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ryken Grattet, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616-5270, USA.

Email: rtgrattet@ucdavis.edu

1058705CJPXXX10.1177/08874034211058705Criminal Justice Policy ReviewBird et al.

research-article2021

Bird et al. 537

Introduction

California’s Public Safety Realignment, also known as AB 109, was a historic reform

aimed at downsizing prisons in the largest prison system in the United States. The

immediate stimulant for the reform was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in two cases

dealing with the constitutionality of the system’s health care delivery to prisoners,

which upheld an order by a lower court to reduce the prison population to 137.5% of

prison design capacity. However, the broader context of chronic overcrowding, soar-

ing costs, and persistently high recidivism also provided incentives to policymakers to

reform the state’s sentencing and correctional policy.

Public Safety Realignment (Realignment) reduced the prison population by trans-

ferring responsibility for managing lower level felony offenders from the state to the

counties. The prison population declined dramatically, by more than 27,000 inmates,

during the first year following Realignment. Although jail populations increased by

about 9,000 inmates following Realignment, the overall level of incarceration in the

state declined (Lofstrom & Raphael, 2016). The overall decline in incarceration asso-

ciated with Realignment resulted from changes in both front-end sentencing policies

and back-end revocation policies (Grattet & Bird, 2018). The front-end changes

included requiring that certain types of lower level offenders who had no history of

serious, violent, or sexual offending serve their time locally. The “back-end” changes

included a requirement that all revocations for supervision violations for people

released from prison be served in county jails rather than state prison. Together, these

changes mean that California counties now shoulder a greater burden for incarcerating

and supervising felony offenders in the state. Realignment has generated significant

national attention because it resulted in large declines in the state’s prison population

without dramatic increases in crime (Lofstrom & Martin, 2015; Lofstrom & Raphael,

2015) and because it prioritizes the use of prison—the most costly form of correctional

control—for serious and violent offenders (Grattet et al., 2016).

Dubbed “The Great California Prison Experiment” (VanSickle & Villa, 2018), a

small body of research has begun to accumulate about Realignment’s impacts on crime

(Lofstrom & Martin, 2015; Lofstrom & Raphael, 2015), local correctional systems

(Grattet & Bird, 2017; Grattet et al., 2017, 2016), and recidivism (Bird & Grattet,

2016). To date, other than a preliminary report by the present researchers (Bird et al.,

2017), research on recidivism has been limited to only a segment of the population

affected by Realignment, people released from prisons. This focus neglects the larger

group of offenders who, after Realignment, were required to serve time locally in

county jails and/or be supervised by county probation departments.

In addition, prior work is limited in that it only covered the initial months after the

reform, when many counties were contending with managing a group of offenders

with more serious criminal histories than the populations they were used to supervis-

ing. Nonetheless, this early research focusing solely on prison releases shows that

recidivism rates remained high in the aftermath of the reform; for some groups of

offenders, recidivism rates were somewhat better and for others they were somewhat

worse than prior to the reform. It remains to be seen whether the findings of research