Early feedback is starting to come in about corrections realignment, the 2011 shift of responsibility for more than 30,000 criminal offenders from the state level to the counties. The issue continues to dominate discussion in the California public safety community. But there are still many questions to be answered about how counties are implementing the changes and what effect realignment is having on criminal behavior.
Last Friday, research fellow Ryken Grattet spoke at a Sacramento briefing about PPIC’s latest research, which looked at recidivism rates for released offenders now being supervised by county probation departments. The study found that offenders released to counties that emphasized reentry services did better than those released to counties that emphasized traditional law enforcement, at least in the first months after realignment. After the briefing, Grattet was joined in the question-and-answer period by his coauthor, research fellow Mia Bird.