Were California’s Decarceration Efforts Smart? A Quasi-Experimental Examination of Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Pajarita Charles,Janaé Bonsu,Aaron Gottlieb,Branden McLeod,Jean Kjellstrand
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854820923384
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2021, Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2021, 116 –134.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820923384

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2020 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

116

WERE CALIFORNIA’S DECARCERATION

EFFORTS SMART?

A Quasi-Experimental Examination of Racial, Ethnic,

and Gender Disparities

AARON GOTTLIEB

The University of Illinois at Chicago

PAJARITA CHARLES

University of Wisconsin–Madison

BRANDEN MCLEOD

The University of Illinois at Chicago

JEAN KJELLSTRAND

University of Oregon

JANAé BONSU

The University of Illinois at Chicago

Over the last decade, California has undertaken one of the largest criminal justice reform efforts in recent U.S. history.

However, little is known about the causal impact of these reforms on the overall incarceration rate and disparities in incar-

ceration rates across demographic subgroups. Using a quasi-experimental synthetic control method and data from the Vera

Institute of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau, our results provide strong evidence that California’s reforms have substan-

tially reduced the state’s overall incarceration rate, but that they have resulted in an increase in Latinx-White incarceration

disparities. We also find suggestive evidence that the reforms have exacerbated Black-White incarceration disparities and

disparities between men and women. Our study is especially relevant at a time when the United States is increasingly inter-

ested in reducing the population of people incarcerated and suggests that care must be taken to ensure that reform efforts do

not increase incarceration disparities among demographic subgroups.

Keywords: criminal justice; criminal justice system; gender; incarceration; punishment; quantitative methods; race

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors would like to thank the three external reviewers, the Special Issue Editors,

Matt Epperson, Amy Blank Wilson, and Gina Fedock, the Editor, Robert Morgan, and the Managing Editor,

Jaime S. Henderson, for constructive feedback that guided the revision of the article and ultimately improved

its quality. We would also like to thank Luke Muentner for excellent research assistance. Correspondence

concerning this article should be addressed to Aaron Gottlieb, Assistant Professor, Jane Addams College of

Social Work, The University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607; e-mail:

agott19@uic.edu.

923384CJBXXX10.1177/0093854820923384Criminal Justice and BehaviorGottlieb et al. / Disparities and California’s Decarceration Efforts

research-article2020

Gottlieb et al. / DISPARITIES AND CALIFORNIA’S DECARCERATION EFFORTS 117

INTRODUCTION

Currently, the United States incarcerates a greater number of people and a larger share of

its population than any country in the world (Walmsley, 2018). The high rate of incarcera-

tion disproportionately affects individuals of color, with Black and Latinx adults impris-

oned at more than 5 times and more than 1.4 times the rate of White adults, respectively

(Nellis, 2016). Although women represent the fastest growing segment of the prison popu-

lation, men still face more than 10 times the risk of being imprisoned (Bronson & Carson,

2019; Sawyer, 2018). While the United States did not always incarcerate at such high rates,

nearly 50 years ago, the U.S. criminal justice system began changing its approach to punish-

ment and transforming sentencing practices (National Research Council, 2014).

Although the U.S. incarceration rate increased continuously for nearly 40 years, this

trend has reversed in recent years with slight declines reported (Pickett, 2016). Moreover,

evidence suggests momentum is growing for more consequential reforms. The American

Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare (AASWSW) identified mass incarceration and

its negative consequences as one of society’s most pressing needs requiring targeted and

long-term attention. As a result, the AASWSW made Promote Smart Decarceration one of

its 12 Grand Challenges (Pettus-Davis & Epperson, 2015). Smart Decarceration is proac-

tive, multidisciplinary, and empirically grounded and aims (a) to reduce the U.S. incarcera-

tion rate substantially; (b) to redress the current racial and economic disparities in the system

(i.e., the disproportionate use of arrest, severe charging and sentencing, and incarceration

for people of color and people living in or near poverty); and (3) to enhance public safety

and health (Epperson & Pettus-Davis, 2017).

Perhaps the largest policy shift toward criminal justice reform was initiated in the State

of California. Since October 2009, California has enacted a series of reforms that reduced

the use of incarceration for individuals who have committed technical violations or nonvio-

lent offenses (Lofstrom et al., 2016). Although previous research has examined the effects

of these reforms on state-level incarceration rates, this research has several critical limita-

tions (Grattet et al., 2016; Lofstrom et al., 2016; Lofstrom & Raphael, 2013). First, this

research is generally descriptive and did not use a study design that incorporated a control

group. Second, prison and jail incarceration rates are typically examined separately. This is

problematic because of the potential for prison populations to decrease only to be absorbed

by local jails resulting in a substitution effect. Third, the existing studies typically focused

on a specific reform rather than the full set of reform efforts. As the reforms have largely

focused on reducing the use of incarceration for nonviolent offenses and technical parole

violations, examining the reforms in full is helpful in determining their overall effect

(Lofstrom et al., 2016). Finally, existing scholarship has largely ignored how California’s

reform efforts have affected various groups of justice-involved adults. In an era of smart

decarceration, knowing who has benefited most (or least) from criminal justice reforms is

essential to inform future policy.

Our study extends earlier work and addresses some of the limitations of earlier studies.

First, we used a synthetic control approach to create a control group that is a weighted com-

bination of states; this approach ensures the control group used in each analysis has similar

incarceration trends to California prior to the reforms (Abadie et al., 2015). Second, we

employed a combined prison and jail approach to address the potential for prison