Release Date: April 5, 2011
Contact:  Michael Rushford
(916) 446-0345

Governor Jerry Brown’s signing of AB109, which transfers thousands of convicted felons from state prisons to California counties, will result in a dramatic increase in violent crime according to the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

The measure is intended to reduce state incarceration costs by keeping felons designated as “nonviolent” in county jails or local drug treatment and mental health programs. 

The Foundation cites a similar policy adopted in the 1960s, which reserved prison for violent criminals and subsidized counties to keep criminals defined as “nonviolent” for local jail terms and rehabilitation programs.  

“The notion that the government can predict which criminals are nonviolent has been thoroughly discredited,” said Foundation President Michael Rushford.  “The last time our state implemented this type of policy the violent crime rate climbed by 216% in fifteen years.  The homicide rate tripled over the same period.  Thousands of innocent Californians paid the price for this mistake,” he added.

California crime statistics indicate that the number of violent crimes in 1965 totaled 52,490.  By 1975 the total was 138,842.  In 1980 the number of violent crimes peaked at 210,290.  The number of homicides went from 880 to 2,209 in ten years, then to 3,411 by 1980. 

“It took another fifteen years for the public to force policy changes, mostly through ballot initiatives, that restored appropriate consequences for all felons and the low crime rates our state has experienced over the past decade,” said Rushford.

The Foundation’s 2009 paper, “The False Promise and Lethal Consequences of Releasing Inmates,” discusses the effects that moving  “nonviolent” felons from prison into community programs has both economically and from a public safety standpoint.  That paper is available at:  www.cjlf.org/publctns/InmateReleases.pdf